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Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

Off topic but I've wondered where colours like "hotpink" came from. Turns out hotpink was first recorded in 1889:

> Then, never was seen living woman so gratuitously ill-dressed! One might have believed she had a sworn antipathy to pure colours, or becoming “cuts.” Hot pink, mouldy blue, livid lilac, and diseased green: such were her preferences —Bentley’s Miscellany, 1849

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/pink-fuschia-t...

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Aniline dyes were first synthesized around 1856. The first aniline dye, known as Perkin's Mauve (Tyrian Purple), was discovered by English chemist William Henry Perkin. This breakthrough in organic chemistry paved the way for the production of a wide range of synthetic dyes, which were cheaper and more colorfast than the natural dyes that were previously used.

Initially, aniline dyes were available in a limited range of colors but by 1859 "hotpink" (magenta and solferino/fuscia) was fashionable, and others "from 1860, and in the '60s by various shades of brown, violet, blue, green, yellow and black".

https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait-list.php?....

Interesting, the other colours are all references to real things, I think. Blue mould; purple-faced (lilac) angry people; green of (say) a diseased limb, or as we describe someone's face when they're vomitous.

So, what is "hot pink": Hot metal before it's red hot? A blushed person's skin??

Maybe it's from 'haute pink'?

Shocking diseasedgreen didn't make it into the CSS spec

Low-key bummed out that I can’t put

    background: mouldyblue;

in my css :smh:

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