Art & MusicGreek → English
Indigo
/ˈɪndɪɡoʊ/noun
A deep blue dye obtained from plants of the genus Indigofera, and the colour it produces.
The Greek roots
Ἰνδικόν
Indikón
the Indian thing
Ἰνδός
Indós
the Indus, India
Literally: “Indian dye”
The story of the word
The Greeks called the dye simply Ἰνδικὸν φάρμακον, the Indian preparation, naming it after the country it was shipped from, and Latin shortened this to indicum. Their word for India came in turn from Persian and ultimately from Sindhu, the Sanskrit name of the river. Newton needed a seventh colour to make his spectrum match the seven notes of the scale, so indigo was wedged between blue and violet, which is why nobody can reliably point to it in a rainbow.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Spanish and Portuguese → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
Indiaindicanindole
In a sentence
The cloth goes into the vat yellow-green and turns indigo in the air.