Words have colors - some are red like a rose and some as green as poison...

[kentuck]

Once they are spoken, they cannot be taken back, no matter how hard we try. Words are powerful. Some can stab you in the heart and some can play the emotional strings on your heart. We should be more careful with the words we use, in my opinion. They can make us happy and they can make us cry. Words are how we connect.

[soothsayer]

1. sticks and stones....

[porphyrian]

2. How does poison become green? Has it always been so?

Will it still be green in a hundred years? Why or why not?

[kenny blankenship]

4. Arsenic used with copper as a green pigment (Also Absinthe)

was a common health hazard in the 19th century (for those that could afford wall papers and colored paints). Copper made the arsenic pigment green, but arsenic made it a cause of poisoning.
Absinthe also is green (not because of copper) and contains a neurotoxin from the herb wormwood, which made it responsible for deaths by poisoning and also by intoxicated violence and accidents. Absinthe's color and power to make drinkers hallucinate earned it the nickname, The Green Fairy. Invented around the end of the 18th century, Absinthe was widely banned as a poison by the First World War.

The use of poisons predates modern chemistry, and the traditional source of most poisons would be from plants, making the archetypal poison in the history of artistic representation green for the same reason that absinthe is green: chlorophyll.

As the natural world recedes from our cultural awareness, as we reduce its extent and viability (and our own viability with it), replacing its sensory existence with artificial environments, the power of associations between a color and a word category like poison will surely diminish.

[porphyrian]

8. That only goes back to the 1800s.

I was simply pointing out that language, especially its use and meaning, evolves over time. Do we define language based on our use of it or does language itself define how we use it, and how, then, do we explain its evolution over time?

Edit: wrong punctuation

[kenny blankenship]

9. As I added above

The use of poisons predates modern chemistry, and the traditional source of most poisons would be from plants, making the archetypal poison in the history of artistic representation tend to be green for the same reason that absinthe is green: chlorophyll.

Ironically, the greenness of absinthe is due to herbal additives historically included to make absinthe look more natural or healthful. The chlorophyll that colors absinthe doesn't come from wormwood extract. The basic absinthe recipe is clear but it was almost always given a green color by herbs just as it was always heavily flavored by herbs and roots that had nothing to do with its "magical" properties. The poisonous nature of absinthe could not be disguised and absinthe's reputation as producer of addiction, madness, and murder helped refasten green to its old valency as the color of poison.



As the natural world recedes from our cultural awareness, as we reduce its extent and viability (and our own viability with it), replacing its sensory existence with artificial environments, the power of associations between a color and a word category like poison will surely diminish.

[porphyrian]

11. Funny you should mention absinthe...

They just had a show on the history channel yesterday with a segment about absinthe and its history. Apparently, it became popular in France right after a blight severely hurt wine production. When the wine industry made its comeback, much of the consumer base had switched to drinking absinthe instead of wine. So, wine makers put out a bunch of propaganda about the evils and poisonous nature or absinthe, using a few deaths from cheaply-made absinthe with questionable ingredients, which were absent from quality absinthe, to damn the beverage entirely. There is also, according to the expert in the segment, nothing in the quality absinthe, which does include wormwood, that is any more harmful than other alcoholic drinks. It is, in fact, making a comeback in Europe. It seems much of what you are citing is from the public relations campaign of French wine makers of the early Twentieth Century.

[sweetheart]

12. i have a bottle of that on my kitchen shelf

I have a bit now and again when it suits. halucinations my foot.

[shadowknows69]

5. I always tend to think of trees and rolling hills

when I think of green. Green is a life color.

[sui generis]

3. Well, sometimes they mean what they say.

But there are a few things we opinionated folks forget from time to time

1. Is your opinion a judgement of the performance or the performer?
2. Does your opinion add to constructive knowledge about the subject?
3. Are you sharing your words like planting a tree in the forest or more like planting a fence?
4. Did you just plant a poisonous shrub. Well dig it up.
5. If there's any question, ask someone for their honest personal opinion, or to clarify. Assuming ill will without overwhelming proof of it is just as bad as giving it.

Words can always be taken back by people who are willing to take them back and own them.

But the person who won't let go of those words and the person who won't at least try to be constructive are both flawed in that particular context.

[kentuck]

6. For whatever weight they may be worth?

Maybe nothing? Maybe just a tiny bit of energy released into the air with all the other pollution...?

[sui generis]

10. I release my pollution with great energy.

Some days the holy spirit enters me and goes right back out my ass.

:P

[grizmaster]

7. it's the chartreuse words that make me cry

sniff sniff :cry:

[Randypiper]

13. Synesthesia