![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
perse (PURS) - n., a dark grayish indigo.
Most dictionaries try to hedge this by saying a dark grayish blue or purple, but that would be an indigo, yes? Yes. In use since at least the 14th century, taken either directly or through an Anglo-Norman-French connection from Medieval Latin pursus or persus, which ultimately seems to be an alteration of Latin Persicus or Persa, Persian. Latin in turn got the word from Greek, which got it from the Persians themselves. Why the color was considered Persian, I cannot at the moment find.
---L.
Most dictionaries try to hedge this by saying a dark grayish blue or purple, but that would be an indigo, yes? Yes. In use since at least the 14th century, taken either directly or through an Anglo-Norman-French connection from Medieval Latin pursus or persus, which ultimately seems to be an alteration of Latin Persicus or Persa, Persian. Latin in turn got the word from Greek, which got it from the Persians themselves. Why the color was considered Persian, I cannot at the moment find.
---L.
