Purple

Purple is a colour made by mixing red and blue. Both colours deny being involved.^[1]

Purple has long been associated with royalty, because for centuries purple dye was so expensive that a typical king could afford one purple thing and had to wear it to everything, including the bath.

Classification

Whether purple is a colour in its own right has been disputed since 1820. The Primacy School holds that purple is a secondary colour and should wait its turn. The Lilac Movement argues that purple was there first, and that red and blue are simply purple with bits missing.^[2]

A third school, founded in 1961, maintains that purple and violet are different colours. It has fourteen members and has spent 65 years explaining the difference to the other two schools, with diagrams, all of which are purple.

Purple in nature

Purple is uncommon in nature, appearing mainly in grapes, bruises, aubergines and sunsets that have gone on slightly too long. Aubergines are purple on the outside and pale on the inside, which botanists describe as the aubergine “not committing”.^[3]

Purple vegetables are generally held to be more interesting than green ones, a view held most strongly by purple vegetables.

See also

• Sun – occasionally responsible for purple
• Water – has never been purple, despite attempts with grape juice

References

1. Mauve, M. (1820). Wait Your Turn. Primary Press.
2. Lavender, L. (1961). “Violet Is Different, Actually”. 340 pp., with diagrams.
3. Aubergine Council (2004). “On the Inside, We Are Pale”.