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Comment by Cryptid | Hacker News Reader

I would also recommend Caroline Alexander's A Winelike Sea http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/sea/winelike-sea and the ensuing discussion at MetaFilter "Achilles sat on the shore and looked out to the wine-dark sea" https://www.metafilter.com/130875/Achilles-sat-on-the-shore-...

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Why would it look "wine dark", whatever that means, and not green? If other cultures describe blues as just different shades of green, why would Homer describe it as red - or maybe black?

Also, if the literal translation is actually "wine face sea", not "wine dark sea" [1], are we really sure we have any idea what this means?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_dark_sea_(Homer)

Alternately many grapes are pretty blueish and almost all are greenish before fully ripe.

Ex: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=wine%20grape&tbs=im...

You're all overthinking it. When you are on a boat and you enter deep water in the Aegean, the color does become very dark like thick red wine, different to the blue waters you see from the coast.

Absolutely. Knowing the phrase "wine dark sea" and its associated discussion, exactly the same struck me when I saw it. Plus reflecting on "verbal" people maybe missing something.

I once had a similar discussion about a phrase that was something like "smooth soft stone," describing a surface someone was walking on. It's a straightforward description of a sensation: if you're walking on a stone surface in bare feet, smooth stone feels much softer than rough stone. If you know how it feels, the phrase sounds perfectly smooth and natural, but if you've never experienced it, or don't remember experiencing it as a child, you might think the phrase is meant to sound jarring paradoxical, instead of gently referencing a paradox doesn't even feel paradoxical to us because it agrees with how we perceive the world.

I don't understand why people think "wine-dark" could mean "purple".

Just parse it like normal. This grammatical construction means "as dark as wine"... blue green and red things can all be dark or light.

Besides, can you think of a dark blue liquid the ancient Greeks would have access to? Wine is pretty much the closest thing to a black liquid they'd have laying around the house.

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