greerwatson


With violet we come to the last hue in the visible spectrum, which is to say:



(Which was named for the colour of the flowers of Viola odorata.)

To me, violet is a shade of PURPLE. That is to say, "purple" is one of the basic colour words in English; and the word refers to a broad range of colours in the same way that BLUE, RED, YELLOW, and GREEN do—though PURPLE is not quite as basic a colour as those, being more on a par with ORANGE and TURQUOISE.

I would not, however, say that violet is focal PURPLE, i.e. the most perfect, ideal shade of PURPLE. That, to me, is a shade slightly more to the BLUE end of the spectrum:





Or, to put it another way, the perfect shade of PURPLE lies between indigo and violet: indigo is the colour transitional between PURPLE and BLUE; and violet lies at the far end of the spectrum. (Beyond that lies ultraviolet, which can't be seen by the human eye.)






BLUE
INDIGO
PURPLE
VIOLET



Read more... )