Art & MusicGreek → English
Chroma
/ˈkroʊmə/noun
The purity or intensity of a colour, how far it sits from grey at the same brightness.
The Greek roots
χρῶμα
chrōma
skin, surface, colour
Literally: “skin, surface colour”
Follow a root:χρῶμα11 words
The story of the word
χρῶμα meant the skin and the surface of the body before it meant colour, the same slide English makes when it says complexion. Greek music theory used it for one of the tuning genera, and that sense survives in chromatic. Colour science took the noun for saturation, which is why a designer can raise the chroma of an image while its lightness stays exactly where it was.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
chromaticchromosomemonochromechrome
In a sentence
Turn the chroma up and the shadows start to look like poster paint.