Wikipedia:
Pink is any of the colors between bluish red (purple) to red, of medium to high brightness and of low to moderate saturation. Commonly used for Valentine's Day and Easter, pink is sometimes referred to as "the color of love." The use of the word for the color known today as pink was first recorded in the late 17th century.
Although pink is roughly considered just as a tint of red, most variations of pink lie between red, white and magenta colors. This means that the pink's hue is somewhat between red and magenta.
Roseus is a Latin word meaning "rosy" or "pink." Lucretius used the word to describe the dawn in his epic poem On the Nature of Things (De Rerum Natura). The word is also used in the binomial names of several species, such as the Rosy Starling (Sturnus roseus) and Catharanthus roseus. In most Indo-European languages, the color pink is called rosa. In Persian, it is called "Souraty," meaning "Color of the face." In Hindi, it is called "Gulabi," meaning "Colour of a rose."
Etymology
The color pink is named after the flowers called pinks, flowering plants in the genus Dianthus. The name derives from the frilled edge of the flowers—the verb "to pink" dates from the 14th century and means "to decorate with a perforated or punched pattern" (possibly from German "pinken" = to peck). As noted and referenced above, the word "pink" was first used as a noun to refer to the color known today as pink in the 17th century. The verb sense of the word "pink" continues to be used today in the name of the hand tool known as pinking shears.
Pinke
In the 17th century, the word pink or pinke was also used to describe a yellowish pigment, which was mixed with blue colors to yield greenish colors. Thomas Jenner's A Book of Drawing, Limning, Washing (1652) categorizes "Pink & blew bice" amongst the greens (p. 38), and specifies several admixtures of greenish colors made with pink—e.g. "Grasse-green is made of Pink and Bice, it is shadowed with Indigo and Pink ... French-green of Pink and Indico [shadowed with] Indico" (pp. 38–40). In William Salmon's Polygraphice (1673), "Pink yellow" is mentioned amongst the chief yellow pigments (p. 96), and the reader is instructed to mix it with either Saffron or Ceruse for "sad" or "light" shades thereof, respectively (p. 98).
In gender
The use of pink as distinctive of girls can be dated back at least to 1868, in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, when, after being shown boy and girl twins, Laurie asks:Most remarkable children I ever saw. Which is which?...Amy put a blue ribbon on the boy and a pink on the girl, French fashion, so you can always tell.
University of Maryland Professor Jo B. Paoletti, author of book Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls From the Boys in America, considers this was common usage in French orphanages during the 18th century, but this was not the case everywhere. In the United States, there was no established rule:
In 1855 the New York Times reported on a "baby show" put on by P.T. Barnum, exhibiting "one hundred and odd babies" dressed in pinks, blues, and other colors seemingly without regard to gender. ... A Times fashion report from 1880 has boys and girls dressed alike in white, pink, blue, or violet, and another from 1892 says young girls were wearing a variety of colors that spring, including several shades of blue
There are theories indicating an origin of this costume in the 20th century. Zucker and Bradly say that it began in the 1920s and other authors suggest the 1910s. An article in the trade publication Earnshaw's Infants' Department in June 1918 said: "The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl." From then until the 1940s, pink was considered appropriate for boys because being related to red it was the more masculine and decided color, while blue was considered appropriate for girls because it was the more delicate and dainty color, or related to the Virgin Mary. Since the 1940s, the societal norm was inverted; pink became considered appropriate for girls and blue appropriate for boys, a practice that has continued into the 21st century.
Some feminists have sought to 'reclaim' the color pink. For example, the Swedish feminist party Feminist Initiative and the American activist women's group Code Pink: Women for Peace use pink as their color.The pink ribbon is the international symbol of breast cancer awareness. Pink was chosen partially because it is so strongly associated with femininity.It has been suggested that females prefer pink because of a preference for reddish things like ripe fruits and healthy faces, but the associated study has been criticized as "bad science".The phrase "pink-collar worker" refers, in the West, to persons working in fields or jobs conventionally regarded as "women's work."
In sexuality
Whereas Jewish people were forced to wear a yellow star of David under Nazi rule, men imprisoned on accusations of homosexuality were forced to wear a pink triangle. Nowadays, a pink triangle (sometimes pointing up, contrary to Nazi usage) is often worn with pride.A Dutch newsgroup about homosexuality is called nl.roze (roze being the Dutch word for pink), while in Britain, Pink News is a leading gay newspaper and online news service. There is a magazine called Pink for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) community which has different editions for various metropolitan areas. In France Pink TV is an LGBT cable channel.In business, the pink pound or pink dollar refers to the spending power of the LGBT community. Advertising agencies sometimes call the gay market the pink economy.Though long discontinued, the now mainstream gay-oriented magazine The Advocate for many years of its early history featured a sometimes sizable section of personal ads and mostly sexually oriented ads printed on pink paper and referred to as "the pink pages." As the gay rights movement gained increased mainstream momentum and public acceptance, and as the magazine itself became less underground and was distributed more widely on newsstands in "middle America," the publishers made the section more easily removable for those who preferred not to view/keep it with the main body of the magazine, and The Advocate eventually ceased to include the "pink pages" at all.
In nature
Plants
Cherry blossoms only have a pink color when they bloom in the springtime. Animals
Reptiles
The pink iguana is an iguana that was first identified in 1986 and first recognized as a distinct species in 2009. Birds
Most flamingo species are pink in color due to pink pigments in their diet. Mammals
Many pigs are colored pink.The so-called "white elephant" is revered in several countries in Southeast Asia and is naturally pink.The Pink Dolphin is a freshwater river dolphin endemic to the Orinoco, Amazon and Araguaia/Tocantins River systems of Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela. It is an endangered species and has a brain 40% larger than a human's.
In art
In 1973, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville created "Pink," a broadside meant to explore the notions of gender as associated with the color pink, for an American Institute of Graphic Arts exhibition about color. This was the only entry about the color pink. Various women including many in the Feminist Studio Workshop at the Woman's Building submitted entries exploring their association with the color. De Bretteville arranged the squares of paper to form a “quilt” from which posters were printed and disseminated throughout Los Angeles. She was often called "Pinky" as a result.In 1993, artist Gioia Fonda created a conceptual piece in the form of a week long holiday called pink week. The intention of pink week is to liberate the color pink from all dogma and simply celebrate the color pink as a color.Bubblegum Pink is an installation by the artist duo Bigert & Bergstrom which "confronted [the viewer] with three different mental climates" involving large amounts of pink. This mirrors the use of the color in American prisons to calm aggressive prisoners. It features a pink cell and a carpet worn by repetitive pacing.Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Surrounded Islands wrapped wooded islands in Miami's Biscayne Bay with 6,500,000 square feet (600,000 m) of bright pink fabric. Thomas von Taschitzki has said that "the monochrome pink wrappings"..."form a counterpoint to the small green wooded islands." Many of Franz West's aluminium sculptures were often painted a bright pink, for example Sexualitatssymbol (Symbol of Sexuality). West has said that the pink was intended as an "outcry to nature".
In culture
Academic dress
In the French academic dress system, the five traditional fields of study (Arts, Science, Medicine, Law and Divinity) are each symbolized by a distinctive color, which appears in the academic dress of the people who graduated in this field. Redcurrant, an extremely red shade of pink, is the distinctive color for Medicine (and other health-related fields) fr:Groseille (couleur). Adoption
In Ireland, Support group for Irish Pink Adoptions defines a pink family as a relatively neutral umbrella term for the single gay men, single lesbians, or same-gender couples who intend to adopt, are in the process of adopting, or have adopted. It also covers adults born/raised in such families. The group welcome the input of other people touched by adoption, especially people who were adopted as children and are now adults. Alcoholic beverages
Seeing pink elephants is a euphemism for hallucinations caused by delirium tremens. The concept was used in the Disney's animated film Dumbo when the title character accidentally becomes drunk and sees a parade of pink elephants.A pink lady is an alcoholic beverage made with gin and grenadine syrup and may include other ingredients. A pink squirrel is made of white creme de cacao, creme de noyaux and cream. Pink Gin is a cocktail made by rinsing a glass with bitters and filling with gin. Calendars
In Thailand, pink is associated with Tuesday on the Thai solar calendar. Anyone may wear pink on Tuesdays, and anyone born on a Tuesday may adopt pink as their color. Cartography
In the 19th and early 20th century, pink was the traditional color used in cartography to represent the British Empire. Clothing
Pink (Victoria's Secret) is a line of loungeware clothing. Cosmetics
Mary Kay in 1968, Mary Kay Ash, purchased the first Pink Cadillac, which eventually became the trademark of her company. Economics
Pink Money refers to the financial power of the LGBT community. Education
At the Miraloma Elementary School in San Francisco, California, on September 6 2007, the principal, Ron Machado, got a pink Mohawk haircut , as he had agreed to do if the students raised the school’s Academic Performance Index by at least 55 points. They raised it by 67 points. Employment
When one gets laid off or fired from one's job, in the United States, it is called getting a pink slip. Film and television
Characters
The Pink Panther is a popular cartoon character. He is slightly talkative in two episodes.In The Fairly OddParents, the protagonist Timmy Turner wears a pink shirt and hat.In Power Rangers and their Japanese origins Super Sentai the Pink Rangers are always female and there was never a male Pink Ranger on the show. In one season (Power Rangers: Time Force) and its Japanese Equivalent Mirai Sentai Timeranger, the Pink Ranger (Jen Scotts) as well as her counterpart Yuri was the leader. The first Pink Ranger, Kimberly Hart, became an icon during the first season of the show.In the animated TV series The Powerpuff Girls, the leader Blossom wears a pink dress that matches her pink eyes.In the Sonic the Hedgehog series, one of the characters Amy Rose, is a pink hedgehog. Also, Rouge the Bat is usually depicted wearing pink clothing. Other
Pretty In Pink has the color named in the title.Pink Cadillac was a 1989 movie starring Clint Eastwood.Pink Ladies was the name of Betty Rizzo's (Stockard Channing) gang in the film, Grease.In Japan, blue films were categorized as Pink films (ÉsÉìÉNâfâÊ, Pinku Eiga). Such description is not used recently since "Adult Videos (ÉAÉ_ÉãÉgÉrÉfÉI, Adaruto Bideo) became popular. Finance
Since 1893 the London Financial Times newspaper has used a distinctive salmon pink color for its newsprint, mainly as a way to distinguish itself from competitors. In other countries, the salmon press identifies economic newspapers or economics sections in "white" newspapers. Food
In Japanese language, pink has been described as Momoiro (ìçêF, Momo-Iro), which means "peach color", but Pink (ÉsÉìÉN, Pinku) is more popular recently. Gender
The color pink is often used to represent women or young girls. (See discussion above in section on Pink in gender and sexuality.). Gun rights
The Pink Pistols is a gay gun rights organization. Health
In the pink is an English idiomatic expression for in good condition or in good health.Pink is the official color for Breast Cancer Literature
In Spanish and Italian, a "pink novel" (novela rosa in Spanish, romanzo rosa in Italian) is a sentimental novel marketed to women.In Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown, Faith is wearing a pink ribbon in her hair which represents her innocence.Carl Surely's short story "Dinsdale's Pink" is a coming of age tale of a young man growing up in Berlin in the 1930's, dealing with issues of gender, sexuality and politics. Military
In Nazi Germany, in the Wehrmacht, the panzer divisions used pink military flags. Music
Pink Houses is a song by singer-songwriter John Mellencamp.Pink is an American singer-songwriter whose real name is Alecia Moore."Pink" is a song by Aerosmith.Under The Pink is an album by Tori Amos.In the Land of Grey and Pink is an album by Caravan.Pink Moon is an album by the English singer/songwriter Nick Drake.The Legendary Pink Dots are a cult-classic Anglo-Dutch experimental rock band.Pink Fairies is a British hard rock band; one of the founding members, Twink released a solo album called Think Pink."Think Pink!" is a song from Funny Face.Pink Cadillac (song) is a 1984 humorous rockabilly song by Bruce SpringsteenElvis Presley owned what is the most famous Pink Cadillac in the worldJapanese stoner/drone band Boris have a 2005 album called Pink.Pink Lady was a Japanese female pop music duo of the late 1970s and early 1980s, featuring Mitsuyo Nemoto ("Mie") and Keiko Masuda ("Kei").Pinky was a Japanese punk rock performer in the early 1990s.Shocking Blue – whose name may be a gender-reversing play on shocking pink – was a Dutch rock band that was founded in the late 1960s.The Pink Spiders, an American power pop band.The Flaming Lips, an alternative/psychedelic band, produced the album Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots."Pretty in Pink" is a song by The Psychedelic FursPink Martini is an orchestral band from Portland, Oregon.Pink Floyd were an English rock band.In The Sing Off, Solo wore pink T-shirts. Panelology
A new form of Kryptonite called pink kryptonite appeared in Supergirl Comics in 2003. It turns super-powered Kryptonians temporarily gay. Performance art
Pink Man is a performance artist currently living in the San Francisco Bay Area who wears a pink unitard while riding a unicycle. Politics
Pink, being a 'watered-down' red, is sometimes used in a derogatory way to describe a person with mild communist or socialist beliefs (see Pinko).In maps of political parties in Portugal, pink is used to represent the Socialist Party.The Pink House (Spanish: Casa Rosada) is the official seat of the executive branch of the government of Argentina.Code Pink is an anti-war organization co-founded in 2002 by anti-corporate globalization activist Medea Benjamin of the NGO Global Exchange in San Francisco.The term pink revolution may be used to refer to the overthrow of President Askar Akayev and his government in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan after the parliamentary elections of February 27 and of March 13, 2005, although it is more commonly called the tulip revolution.The city of Lund, Sweden staged a fake gay Nazi parade on 17 August 2005 with pink banners that said Welcome Gay Nazis in order to play a joke on and cause discomfort to Scandinavian neo-Nazis who stage a march each year in that city to honor a Swedish king. Religion
In Catholicism, pink (called rose by the Catholic Church) symbolizes joy and happiness. It is used for the Third Sunday of Advent and the Fourth Sunday of Lent (see Laetare Sunday) to mark the halfway point in these seasons of penance. For this reason, one of the candles in an Advent wreath may be pink, rather than purple. However, in some Protestant denominations, the pink candle is sometimes lit on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, sometimes known as the Sunday of Love.Pink is the color most associated with Indian spiritual leader Meher Baba, who often wore pink coats to please his closest female follower, Mehera Irani, and today pink remains an important color, symbolizing love, to Baba's followers.The Invisible Pink Unicorn is the goddess of a parody religion, a rhetorical tool intended to satirize the contradictory properties often attributed to deities. Sonics
Pink noise ( sample (help·info)), also known as 1/f noise, in audio engineering is a signal or process with a frequency spectrum such that the power spectral density is proportional to the reciprocal of the frequency. Sports
In Major League Baseball, pink bats are used by baseball players on Mother's Day as part of a weeklong program to benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure.Pink can mean the scarlet coat worn in fox hunting (a.k.a. "riding to hounds"). One legend about the origin of this meaning refers to a tailor named Pink (or Pinke, or Pinque).The leader in the Giro d'Italia cycle race wears a pink jersey (maglia rosa); this reflects the distinctive pink-colored newsprint of the sponsoring Italian La Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper.The University of Iowa's Kinnick Stadium visitors' locker room is painted pink. The decor has sparked controversy, perceived by some people as suggesting sexism and homophobia.Palermo, a soccer team based in Palermo, Italy, traditionally wears pink home jerseys.WWE Hall of Famer Bret Hart, as well as other members of the Hart wrestling family, is known for his pink and black wrestling attire.The Western Hockey League team Calgary Hitmen originally wore pink as a tribute to the affore mentioned Bret Hart, who was a part team owner at the time. Toys
Toys aimed at girls often display pink prominently on packaging and the toy themselves, which is causing controversy with some people about girls wearing nothing but pink.In its 1957 catalog, Lionel Trains offered for sale a pink model freight train for girls. The engine was pink and the cars of the freight train were various pastel colors. The caboose was baby blue. It was a marketing failure because any girl who was enough a tomboy to want a model train would want a real train and not a pink train, and boys in the 1950s did not want to be seen playing with a pink train. However, today it is a valuable collector’s item. Transportation planning
Delta Air Lines' Pink Breast Cancer Research Foundation Boeing 767-400ERThe Chicago Transit Authority recently debuted the Pink Line rail service.In the London Underground system, Hammersmith & City Line, running from Hammersmith to Barking is assigned the color pink on the tube map.Pink is one of the colors used in the fixtures of the MMDA such as bus shelters; the other one is light blue. Also, pink is painted on some streets of Metro Manila.The Pink Line is a proposed subway through the city of West Hollywood.Delta Air Lines has a Boeing 767-400ER aircraft painted in a pink livery for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
