About this episode
Kory Stamper discusses the challenges of defining colors and the collaboration with scientists to create descriptions of colors.
If the definition of “green” is yellow plus blue, how do you define “yellow” and “blue”? Kory Stamper is a lexicographer who has written dictionaries for nearly 30 years at Merriam-Webster, Cambridge Dictionaries and Dictionary.com. She joins host Krys Boyd to discuss the difficulty of defining colors, why they are nearly indescribable, and why it took the help of scientists to create descriptions of everything around us. Her book is “ True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color – from Azure to Zinc Pink. ” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
People in this episode
Host: Krys Boyd
Guest: Kory Stamper
Topics covered
- color definition
- lexicography
- language
- science
- perception
Keywords
- color
- definition
- lexicographer
- Kory Stamper
- language
- science
- True Color
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Merriam-Webster, Cambridge Dictionaries, Dictionary.com
Books & works: True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color – from Azure to Zinc Pink
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