A Colours in Cultures diagram got me thinking. Some cross-cultural associations (weak in parens):
PINK: healthy, children, femininity, (erotic)
GREEN: life, nature, growth, eternity, religion, compassion, jealousy
WHITE: purity, luxury, trust, truce, peace, (death)
RED: heat, danger, anger, passion, success, excitement, desire, marriage, love, (erotic)
BLUE: cold, rational, art, gods, freedom, loyalty, unhappy, trouble
BLACK: evil, bad luck, self-cultivation, penance, style, authority, (death)
PURPLE: decadence, flamboyance, gratitude, wisdom, beauty, cruelty, mystery
YELLOW: illness, cowardice, deceit, fun, joy, repels evil, strength
BROWN: earthy, (reliable)
ORANGE: warmth, learning, (family, friendly, healing)
I couldn’t resist looking for concept-color schemes to explain these. After all, the concepts associated with key colors must be important concepts. My guesses:
PINK: healthy skin, esp. nipples/lips/genitals, = red + white = clean sex
GREEN: nature, nature spirits & their emotions
WHITE: clean
RED: fire/blood/blush, hot emotions, especially domination & sex
BLUE: sky/water, far objects & mental mode
BLACK: night/dark, bad/selfish
PURPLE: rare, = red+blue = far domination = high class/status?
YELLOW: urine/puss, sun = relaxed playful mood?
BROWN: dirt/ground
ORANGE: fire??
I’ve ordered the colors from easy to hard to interpret. Pink, green, and white seem pretty obvious. Red, blue, and black are less clear, but we seem to have a rough handle on them. Purple, yellow, orange, and brown seem hardest to understand.
After my amateur effort above, I went looking for other accounts, finding this, this, this, and this. Not sure I’ve found the good stuff though. Hat tip to Katja Grace.