The Ducks By Stonegate

A List of "Beautiful" Words: Red

for your next poem/story

Cardinal - a brilliant red

Carmine - a vivid red

Carnation - a moderate red

Carnelian - a red or brownish-red

Cerise - a moderate red

Cherry - a variable color averaging a moderate red

Crimson - any of several deep purplish reds

Damask - a grayish red

Erythematous - exhibiting abnormal redness of the skin or mucous membranes due to the accumulation of blood in dilated capillaries (as in inflammation)

Erythrism - a condition marked by exceptional prevalence of red pigmentation (as in hair or feathers)

Ferruginous - resembling iron rust in color

Floridity - tinged with red

Gules - the heraldic color red

Hectic - red, flushed

Laky - a purplish red

Lateritious - of the color of red brick

Lurid - shining with the red glow of fire seen through smoke or cloud

Magenta - a deep purplish red

Maroon - a dark red

Miniate - to paint with red lead or vermilion

Puce - a dark red

Raddle - red ocher

Rouge - a red powder consisting essentially of ferric oxide used in polishing glass, metal, or gems and as a pigment

Rubefaction - the act or process of causing redness

Rubicundity - having a healthy reddish color

Rubor - redness of the skin (as from inflammation)

Rubricity - redness

Ruby - the dark red color of the ruby

Rufescence - a reddish or bronze color

Rufosity - quality of being reddish

Sanguine - a moderate to strong red; bloodred

Scarlet - any of various bright reds

Stammel - archaic: the bright red color of stammel (i.e., obsolete: a coarse woolen clothing fabric usually dyed red and used sometimes for undershirts of penitents)

Vermeil - vermilion (i.e., any of various red pigments)

Vinaceous - of the color of red wine

More: Lists of Beautiful Words ⚜ Word Lists

yearning for heaven, you'll never be free

“Consider this: we fuck with the lights on. You trace the flat shape of my breasts when I lay down. We keep the windows open because the rain smells like the closest we’ve ever been to Heaven. We watch the ferns drip like they’re heavy with honey. I cut red peppers in the kitchen. You put on every song we’ve ever fallen in love to. I’m beginning to lose the difference between our skin. I’m cold when you’re shivering. I ache when you’re lonely. I can feel the warmth in your pink, fluttering heart, and I hold it in my hands.”

— Schuyler Peck, On A Long Weekend

Cycles

on the one hand, extremely funny to get told “get help” by a fortune cookie, on the other, i can’t believe betterhelp has breached influencers and podcasters and started getting fortune cookies to shill for them

Writing Reference: Symbolism of Colors

Colors are proven to have a profound effect on the human psyche and moods.

Territories use colors to represent themselves on their flags.

The significance of colors is proven by the high value that our ancestors placed on certain plants or substances that could be made into dyes, such as the Imperial Purple of Rome that was produced from a mollusk that was valued more highly than gold, or the saffron crocus that produced the sacred color of the same name.

Prior to the development of chemical dyes, the creation of colors that did not fade in the Sun or wash away was a combination of art, science, and magic, akin to an alchemical process.

The impact of the Sun shining through stained glass, painting the interiors of churches with living colors that shimmered and danced, in a medieval world where color was often a privilege of the wealthy few, can only be imagined.

The 7 colors of the rainbow—which break down into 700 shades that are visible to the naked eye—are associated with the seven planets, the days of the week, the Seven Heavens, and the seven notes of the musical scale.

Symbolic Meanings of Some Colors

BLACK

Night, the absence of light; mourning, sobriety, denial; authority; perfection and purity; maturity and wisdom.

Although it’s the opposite of white, both shades are, in fact, due to an absence of color, and technically speaking black is not a “color” at all. This doesn’t stop it having a wealth of symbolic meaning.

BLUE

Truth and the intellect; wisdom, loyalty, chastity; peace, piety, and contemplation; spirituality; eternity.

There’s something cool and detached about blue that gives rise to its reputation for spirituality and chastity. Above all, blue is the color of the sky. Like the sky, blue is infinitely spacious. It contains everything, and yet contains nothing. The color is therefore associated with ideas of eternity.

BROWN

Poverty, humility, practicality.

Primarily associated with the Earth, soil, the raw element before it is covered with greenery. The word for earth, in Latin, is humus, which carries the same root as humility. Religious ascetics wear brown as a reminder of this quality and also of their voluntary material poverty.

GRAY

Sobriety, steadiness, modesty.

Gray is the midway point between black and white, and tellingly the “gray area” is an area of indetermination, indecision, or ambiguity. To be described as gray is rather less than flattering, since gray is such a subdued and neutral color, and implies that the person blends into the background.

However, gray is also a color of balance and reasonableness and is the color used, in photography, to balance all others.

Because people’s hair turns gray with age, the word is often used to describe elderly people and is also a color of wisdom.

GREEN

New life, resurrection, hope; the sea; fertility and regeneration; recycling, environmental awareness; a lucky color; an unlucky color.

Green is an amalgam of blue and yellow, and is the color of the fourth chakra. Green is the universal symbol for “Go!” to red’s “Stop!”

MOTLEY

Wealth; a chameleon personality.

Not strictly a color as such, but a combination of many other colors. The word is generally used to describe cloth or clothing. The rainbow nature of motley means that whoever wears it has as many aspects as there are colors, a chameleon personality, and it can indicate the trickster or fool (as worn by the jester, or the Fool in the Tarot) as well as kings, emperors, and deities.

In the Bible, Joseph’s coat of many colors is the object of much envy.

ORANGE

Balance between spirit and sexuality; fertility and yet virginity; energy; the Sun; like yellow, orange is believed to be an appetite stimulant.

Orange has two aspects that we see time and time again, pivoting between the material and spiritual worlds, which is not surprising given that the color itself is a balance between red and yellow. As such, it represents the second chakra, the first being red, and the third, yellow.

PINK

Femininity, innocence, good health, love, patience.

Pink is the ultimate feminine color, being flirty, girlish, and innocent at the same time. Pale pink is used as the symbol for a baby girl, just as pale blue is used for baby boys. This feminine angle is why the color pink has been adopted as a symbol of gay pride. Pink is the color of universal, unconditional love.

PURPLE

Royalty and pomp; power, wealth, majesty.

Purple, or indigo, is the color associated with the sixth chakra. Since it was first discovered, purple has been the color of choice to denote wealth and power. Emperors, kings, and the more powerful members of the clergy—such as bishops—choose the colour as a way of defining their status. This is because the dye itself was originally available from one source and one source only; the secretions of a certain gland of an unfortunate sea snail called the Murex brandaris. Therefore, purple was extremely costly to produce and strictly the color of those who could afford it, since the dye itself was more expensive even than gold. The most popular shade of the color is called Tyrian Purple (named for the city of Tyre, where it was manufactured).

RED

Vitality and life-force; fire, the Sun, the South; blood; good luck and prosperity; power and authority; masculine energy; war and anger; passion, energy, sexuality.

One of the three primary colors, bright red pops out of whatever environment it happens to be in and grabs our attention more than any other color. Moreover, it is the first actual color that is seen by babies.

SAFFRON

Spirituality, holiness, good fortune.

Named after the saffron crocuses whose stigmas create the color, the harvesting of these delicate plant parts is a labor-intensive and time-critical matter and so the actual dye is costly to produce.

VIOLET

Knowledge and intelligence; piety, sobriety, humility, temperance; peace and spirituality.

Violet is the color associated with the seventh chakra. There are many shades of violet ranging from ethereal pale shades through to the darker mauve, considered the only color acceptable as a relief from the relentless strict mourning convention of black and gray in Victorian times. Violet is a combination of red and blue, and its association with temperance is indicated in some Tarot suits.

The humble qualities of violet as a color come from the flower. The tiny violet grows close to the ground, hidden modestly in among the grass, yet noticeable because of its striking color.

WHITE

Purity, virginity; death and rebirth, a beginning and an end; in the Far East, mourning.

White is both the absence of any color and the sum of all colors together, so in a sense it can mean everything or nothing. This combination of all colors has given white the name of the “many-colored lotus” in Buddhist teachings.

YELLOW

The Sun; power, authority; the intellect and intuition; goodness; light, life, truth, immortality; endurance; the Empire and fertility [China]; cowardice, treachery.

Yellow is one of the three primary colors and is related to the third chakra which lives in the region of the solar plexus. This is apt, since yellow, like red and orange, is one of the Sun colors. It could be argued that yellow is the most dazzling of the three, so the association makes good sense.

Because leaves turn yellow and then to black with the onset of fall, in several places, including Ancient Egypt, yellow is a color of mourning. A yellow cross was painted on doors as a sign of the plague, possibly for the same reasons, and even today yellow marks off a quarantined area.

Source ⚜ Writing Notes & References More: On Colours

Nothing

To do nothing but stare at a wall, watch the sun wash over old paint. To cry because something blew into my eye. I thought of something funny and remembered your face. To cut a carrot the slow way, julienning each disc, one by one, to put my face over the pot as hot water boils. To do nothing but fold my clothes as if my hand was an iron. To watch your yawn like a slow-motion movie. To touch the thin film of dust without rush to wipe it away. To write as if I were talking to myself. To do nothing the whole day. To fill it to the brim with nothing, nothing but nothing.

Soaps

ouroboros

(ione meraki 2024)