"The symbolism of purple is equally ambiguous. In terms of formal power, purple was, and often still is, the color of royalty or of the highest vestments of priesthood. And yet in terms of unbridled revelry, if Bacchus ever had a color he could claim for his own, it should surely be the shade of tannin on drunken lips, of John Keats's 'purple-stained mouth', or perhaps even of Homer's dangerously wine-dark sea."
— Victoria Finlay, Color: A Natural History of the Palette
If there's any color that conjures deep emotions more than blue, it's purple. It is a color that can be created in painting by combining red and blue paint. Purple intensely resembles violet, which is the highest visible color on the human light spectrum, just before the (technically invisible) ultravioletnote . Purple as a color has symbolized royalty since antiquity (especially Roman/Byzantine), though in many cultures it wasn't considered a separate color from red. The term "Purple Prose" was created specifically to critique people sewing purple patches on to their clothes to show off their wealth.
Tropes
- Cartoon Throbbing: When hurt body parts swell, throb, and turn purple.
- Graceful Ladies Like Purple: When a girl or woman shows her femininity and/or gracefulness by wearing purple.
- Gravity Is Purple: Gravity associated with the color purple.
- Mysterious Purple: The color purple used to characterize or code things as mysterious, ambiguous, or enigmatic.
- Purple Is Impure: Purple used to represent corruption.
- Purple Is Powerful: Purple used to represent power and badassery.
- Purple Is the New Black: When a different dark color, such as purple, stands in for black.
- Shades of Suffocation: A lack of air can make you turn purple.
- Technicolor Toxin: Poison and other toxic materials are vividly colored, in particular halogen green and deep purple are often used.
- Yellow/Purple Contrast: A popular Color Contrast between purple and yellow.