www.alphadictionary.com

Dana Stabenow is a prolific Alaskan mystery author whose books I enjoy. On he FB page yesterday she posted a link to Merriam-Webster's 10 unusual colors. As it's as much a word study as a color code, I though youse guys might be interested, although such fine distinctions escape me. Welcome to verdegris and puce, whose very names incite nausea!
http://www.merriam-webster.com/top-ten- ... ilion.html

I know red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Okay, so I can't actually distinguish between indigo and violet. I am reminded of a paint ad on TV where the woman wants, "not purple but PUUURRR-pl."

The definitions of the colors given in the link are all but useless. Accurate color definitions use the Pantone Scale or the Natural Color System (NCS) or the like. The NCS defines a color in terms of darkness, saturation and color elements. On the Wikipedia site, the yellow in the Swedish flag is defined thus:
NCD 0580-Y10R which translates to 5% darkness, 80% saturation, 90% yellow 10% Red

The Hex triplet for "puce" in the Pantone system is #4F3A3C A printers in various parts of the world can use this information to print the same tone without contacting each other. In the NCS it is S 2020-R20B (20% darkness, 20% saturation, 80% red and 20% blue)

There are other systems to get to the same color. The approximate wave lenght of the color is 403nm

But of course color chips are the easiest for the layperson.

Agreed, the definitions of the colors are all but worthless. They are a riot to read, though. They may mean nothing to us, but they are fun.