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.