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Comment by waterproof | Hacker News Reader

Any day that I learn something new about color is a good day.

Here's my favorite color factoid: There is no such thing as monochromatic pink. You have to make it by combining the two ends of the visible spectrum: somethung reddish and something violet-ish. So that means there is no pink in a rainbow, strictly speaking.

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This is conflating two kinds of pink. The pink made from combining ends of the spectrum is most commonly termed ‘hot pink.’

The other, very often just ‘pink,’ is predominantly a light red. A quick and sloppy way to describe this is a light grey with a raised red component.

Also, you can make hot pink without needing to use spectral violet (the ‘end’ of the spectrum) since there are combinations of blue and red that are ‘metameric,’ creating a perceptually matching response in our eyes.

The other, very often just ‘pink,’ is predominantly a light red. A quick and sloppy way to describe this is a light grey with a raised red component.

While that’s true, it’s also still not monochromatic in the electromagnetic sense.

Absolutely, I had that in my draft but chopped it out along with a digression into black body radiation.

When I was young I was taught that pink is a light shade of red. But what kids these days call pink seems to me to be a bright magenta.

The word "pink" is derived from a name this flower had about 600 years ago:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Dianthus...

So however you see that flower, that's the literal pink prototype.

And the flower is named for its "cutmarks" on its petal edges, which resemble pinking on cut fabric.

Thank you.

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