The Buggy Origins of Crimson

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi there, this is Kim from Council Bluffs, Iowa. Well,

We’re glad to have you, Kim. What’s up? Well, I have a question for you regarding

A word that is actually Turkish, but it sounds a lot like an English word. I know that English

Has adopted a lot of words from other languages, and this one almost sounds like an approximation.

The Turkish word for red is kirmza.

And I taught ESL.

And when I was working with Turkish people, I heard this word and I thought, well, you know, that sounds remarkably like the English word crimson.

And so I was wondering if kirmza is the root word for the word crimson.

You know, turquoise or turquoise is also related to Turkish.

It’s what the French considered the Turkish blue.

So I’m rambling here.

I’m sorry.

You’re almost on the money.

It’s not that English got it from Turkish.

It’s that they both got it from the same source.

Oh.

And you’re right.

They are related.

Crimson and kermisa, is that how you say it?

Yes.

Are both from the same origin.

And it actually is an insect.

What?

Yeah, there’s an insect whose Latin name is Kermes vermilio,

K-E-R-M-E-S-V-E-R-M-I-L-I-O.

And English gets three words for red from that insect.

And it’s crimson, vermilion, and carmine

All come from the same insect at different times.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah, and throughout the Middle East and Europe, pretty much every language has a color that’s red or red-like, reddish, that comes from the same insect.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, there’s this insect that breathes on a certain kind of tree, a couple of different kinds of trees in the Mediterranean, and they look like little red pills, almost like little red balls.

And they got a red dye from that through a complicated process.

And that red dye for a long time was what you used for red.

As far back as like old Persian and like 500 BC and maybe before that, back to Sanskrit,

We can find in old texts, different words, all referring to the same insect.

And a lot of times they look like karmuza or carmine.

And so it’s in Arabic and it’s in Spanish and French and German and Croatian and Greek and Hebrew.

All of them have words going back to this one insect.

Well, who knew? That’s amazing.

Grant knew.

There’s another.

So what happened, though, this red apparently is not very fast, as they say.

It doesn’t stay very well in fabric and it fades easily.

And so there’s another insect discovered in Mexico, which is cochineal.

And so that’s C-O-C-H-I-N-E-A-L.

It didn’t generate as many words, though, for red in a variety of languages like the Kermes Familia did.

Yes, they look like blood.

Yeah, exactly. It’s a brilliant red.

Well, that is fascinating to learn. Thank you so much.

I had no idea that that question was going to have so many tangents.

Well, it’s the kind of thing that you can take back to students and get them doubly interested in language.

Well, there we go.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Take care of yourself.

Thanks so much for the question.

Bye-bye.

You’re very welcome.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Well, if a word is making you wonder about it, give us a call and we’ll talk about it.

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