2544: glass Nov 30, 2021

Although 'glass' refers to a material in English, throughout Indo-European languages the root of this word often led to other meanings for a variety of colors. The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root *ghel- meant 'shine' and as a result eventually came to mean 'glass' in Germanic languages, but also led to words for the colors yellow such as Old English 'glær' or Latin 'glaesum' (amber) or indeed Modern English 'yellow'. In Old Irish 'glass' meant 'green' and in Welsh 'glas' means 'blue'.

2412: Words for 'Green' and Plants Jul 29, 2021

Lots of languages, unsurprisingly perhaps, have words for 'green' that relate to plant growth, particularly of young ones. The Germanic 'green'—also related to 'grow' and 'grass'—which after taking on the meaning of the color eventually led back to meaning 'plant life' in the form of 'greenery'. In Romance languages the Latin 'virere' (to sprout) led to 'viridis' and descendants including the Italian 'verde'. Before this an earlier word for green (galbinus) and yellow (gilvus) developed from the same origin and would have been the same. This pattern holds up in Semitic languages as well such as the Hebrew ירק (vegetable) and ירוק (green), but the same Semitic root led to the Tamazight [wriɣ] meaning 'yellow'.