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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

Isn’t “wine dark” used in Homer to describe the sea at dawn? I’ve associated it to mean dark with a hint of purple from the rising sun — not literally ruby-colored.

It seems odd that English-speaking people would get overly literal about this expression when English itself is full of similar exaggerative coloring: someone “ashen-faced” is presumably not light gray and devoid of hue all over their skin, etc.

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It's not like bodies of water are always blue anyway. The ocean's not. I've seen the same broad stretch of the upper Mississippi appear anywhere from pale green to battleship grey, along with several shades of blue including almost sapphire. The lower part of the Missouri's mostly brown or grey. I'd assume anyone who described it as any kind of blue without apparent purpose or calling attention to how unusual that is had simply never seen it.

The later example in TFA of the Bible using the phrase "red horse" is an odd one. There are red horses. Hell Steinbeck wrote a novella titled "The Red Pony". They're pretty common. What's the big deal?

I think phrases like "yellow dog", "red cow", and "bluegrass" make sense if you understand them to mean relatively yellow, red, or blue. That is, a yellow dog is a dog that is yellow for a dog. A red cow is redder than you expect a cow to be even if relative to a bird, say, it is brown.

I don't know how you go from here to green honey, though.

Even today, we often refer to cats or dogs with grayish fur as "blue", even though there's nothing blue about that color.

I’d want to know why we are translating that word to mean green? Is is used to describe other green things, if so What? Did they have a word for yellow, and if so what was that used to describe?

You are correct, the word that is today translated as green "Yarok" meant yellow in those days.

It is used to describe gold and an egg: http://www.balashon.com/2006/08/yarok.html?m=1

The language shifted not the color.

Pale honey in a morning light can definitely have a tinge of green. I'm no good at photography, but an sure others have captured it. It might be environmentally related and isn't actually green.

Eg. green sky (ignoring northern lights) can happen just before dawn when there is a slight smog (bushfire perhaps). But it's more white than anything, but it's definitely a band between the red sunrise and the blue sky. The honey green is similar... It's definitely still a pale golden color.

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