On the Color- Vocabulary of Children. 27 



native power. Plum is not out of place, but this is scarcely 

 true of pink. It is strange that fewer children should have 

 given no answer to lilac than to purple. 



^ The very general distribution of answers to the four colors, 

 orange, violet, lilac, and purple, as also to gray and drab, yet 

 to be considered, offers material of considerable interest. It 

 shows in the first place how great a variety of words occurs 

 to young minds for the same sensation. Not less than 

 twenty children — not the same ones in each case — gave 

 the name brown to each of the colors, orange, violet, purple, 

 gray, and drab. No less than a dozen pupils in each case 

 Trave'the name purple to lilac, blue, orange, pink, and violet. 

 The number of colors often called blue is also large, while 

 red appears among the answers to nearly all the test colors, 

 gray and drab only excepted. 



Drab and gray were very similar in appearance. The 



former was slightly darker, and contained a little blue. The 



latter was a mere mixture of black and white pigments. If 



seen side by side, no one would say they were the same color. 



Drab was correctly named oftener than gray, and also oftener 



than gray was called drab ; yet gray was called drab more 



frequently than it was correctly designated. Though drab 



contained an appreciable quantity of blue, this fact is only 



slightly indicated in the tables. Nearly as many eyes saw 



blue in the gray as in the drab. Another slight recognition 



of the blue is the greater number of slate answers in drab. 



These tables show that children over eight years of age have 



many ways of designating the simple shades gray and drab. 



In all, gray received sixteen different appellations. Drab 



received all these and eight additional ones. 



In general, red appears most frequently in the answers. 

 Blue and green were each given to thirteen different colors. 

 Yellow was comparatively rarely used. Purple occurs very 

 often, yet is seldom applied with discrimination. Alto- 

 gether for my sixteen tests the children found seventy-three 

 distinct names ; viz. red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, 

 black, white, pink, brown, lilac, gray, scarlet, crimson, purple, 



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