Sure, and silvered mirrors aren't very good as mirrors either when
they get a little tarnish - but they're still shiny. A polished
bronze mirror, no matter how flawed, can do a pretty good job of
dazzling you when it reflects sunlight.
I don't understand literary color descriptions in general. "The
wine-dark sea"? Unless Homer was familiar with blue wine, or the sea
was red, I don't get it.
And while Tolkien's "red metal" is unique in my experience, I
remember seeing several authors use the phrase "red gold". I'm
sorry, but in the words of Lord Blackadder, "The color of gold ... is
gold."
> I don't understand literary color descriptions in general. "The
> wine-dark sea"? Unless Homer was familiar with blue wine, or the sea
> was red, I don't get it.
> And while Tolkien's "red metal" is unique in my experience, I
> remember seeing several authors use the phrase "red gold". I'm
> sorry, but in the words of Lord Blackadder, "The color of gold ... is
> gold."
Well, there is such a thing as red gold... Hey, look what I saw on
Wikipedia: "During ancient times, due to impurities in the smelting process,
gold frequently turned a reddish color. This is why many Greco-Roman texts,
and even many texts from the Middle Ages, describe gold as "red".[citation
needed]"
I think "olive skin" is the weirdest of them all.
T.
> Well, there is such a thing as red gold... Hey, look what I saw on
> Wikipedia: "During ancient times, due to impurities in the smelting process,
> gold frequently turned a reddish color. This is why many Greco-Roman texts,
> and even many texts from the Middle Ages, describe gold as "red".[citation
> needed]"
So, the swords in question were made from gold. I don't know of any other
gold swords except in Minecraft, but even those don't last very long.
No wonder the petty kindoms fell, if this was their dominant weapons
technology.
> Anyway, bronze can be red, can it not? Depending on
> the amount of copper in the alloy?
As well as impurities, intentional or otherwise.
SQ
You don't even have to go back that many years. K's engagement ring, which
came down a couple generations of our family, is gold with a reddish
tinge. When I first took it to get it resized for her, the jeweler
described it as "rose-gold", which evidently is the official designation.
I'm not sure I would want to use Blackadder as a definitive research
source. :)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
o...@panix.com "_Lord Of The Rings_, Baldrick? Of _course_ I've
read it! Some Ring throws a Dwarf into a fire or
something."
Exploded by linguists long ago. There are languages even today with no
words for colors beyond "light" and "dark", but the speakers of those
languages can perceive colors just as accurately as we can; they just
don't have names for 'em. Even in the industrialized world, there are
differences. Few languages have a word for "pink", and the word
"orange" entered English only a few centuries ago. On the other hand,
Russian has two different words for the color of the sky and the color
of a blueberry, while in Welsh grass and the sky are traditionally the
same color (though, under cultural pressure from English, Welsh colors
are realigning).
--
John W Kennedy
"You can, if you wish, class all science-fiction together; but it is
about as perceptive as classing the works of Ballantyne, Conrad and W.
W. Jacobs together as the 'sea-story' and then criticizing _that_."
-- C. S. Lewis. "An Experiment in Criticism"
That assumption is a big one. Back in 1980, the NJ State Council on the
Arts decided to make one grant do double duty by paying a craft
blacksmith to make swords and then donating them to the NJ Shakespeare
Festival (1963-1990, R.I.P.). Within 24 hours of their delivery, half
had broken, and the rest were bent--the hard way. It seems that swords
are a little more difficult to make than horseshoes.
--
John W Kennedy
Having switched to a Mac in disgust at Microsoft's combination of
incompetence and criminality.
> On the other hand,
> Russian has two different words for the color of the sky and the color
> of a blueberry
I always love these.
English has different words for the color of the sky and the color of
blueberries, too. Blueberries, in my experience, are blue. The sky,
however, may be azure or cerulean. Or red.
And Eskimos (silly, that, since "Eskimos" have a number of different
languages) have 47 words for snow. Of course, you can probably work
out that many in English, too.
> I'm not sure I would want to use Blackadder as a definitive research
> source. :)
Get out! Next you'll be saying I can't rely on Wikipedia.
> And Eskimos (silly, that, since "Eskimos" have a number of different
> languages) have 47 words for snow. Of course, you can probably work
> out that many in English, too.
Well, that last factoid is questionable, since the Arctic languages
are polysynthetic, meaning they can and do form an indefinite number
of words from any given root. This page has a decent discussion:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000405.html