purple
adj.— «I’m quite surprised sometimes when I come to America and I find the interservice rivalry still surprises me in many ways. It doesn’t happen here because we are so much smaller as far as armed forces go than the Americans. And nearly all of the senior officer education, senior officer posts are what we call purple. By the time you get to be a brigadier general, you start to be very, very purple and you start to be very, very triservice.» —“Talk of the Nation: Military leadership in possible war with Iraq” by Charles Heyman National Public Radio (U.S.) Mar. 17, 2003. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
There was a time when William Shakespeare was just another little seven-year-old in school. Classes in his day were demanding — and all in Latin. A new book argues that this rigorous curriculum actually nurtured the creativity that later flourished...
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