Mauve was a word that both contestants got on today's edition of the TV wordgame Countdown, which I was watching while (sort of) running on the running machine at the gym earlier.
Mauve is a light purple colour and it was extremely fashionable in the mid-19th century, when the chemical process to create a dye of this colour was discovered by the English chemist Sir William Henry Perkin. Moreover, it became a suitable colour to be worn during the half-mourning period, which was the second stage of the mourning period. Mauve was apparently the world's first synthetic dye. It was patented in 1856 and was originally called aniline purple or mauveine. The name mauve comes from the French word for the flower mallow, which has a pale purple colour (it has nothing to do with the French word mauvais, meaning 'bad', where the 'u' replaced the 'l' of the Latin word malus, bad). Before the word mauve entered English, there are examples of things being described as 'of a mallow colour' or 'of a mallow-flower colour' (the first citations for both in the OED are dated 1611).
Susan:
The 1890s have been described as the "mauve decade." I can't give a citation, but I think it referred to a certain subtle elegance of style.
Posted by: Marc Leavitt | June 23, 2012 at 01:51 PM
Thanks, Marc. Yes, I came across a book entitled 'The Mauve Decade', which referred to the 1890s. As you say, presumably it's a reference to the elegance of the style.
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