TRUE COLOR

Sea pink and other surprises.

Lexicographer Stamper became fascinated by the definitions of colors when, beginning in 1998, she worked on revising the massive Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Tasked with spotting minute errors, she also spotted quirky terms used to describe hues: begonia, for example, fiesta, and, especially puzzling, sea pink. To Stamper, the sea was associated with blues, greens, grays, but not any shade of red. How did the definition happen? she wondered. Her puzzlement led her to a decade of research into the dictionary’s citation files (4 feet high and 20 feet long, containing the history of every entry): family archives, government documents, and scientific reports; resulting in a lively examination of both the history of color naming and the meticulous process of producing a comprehensive dictionary. It’s filled with opinionated, insistent, stubborn characters who devoted their lives to accuracy: notably, I.H. Godlove, a chemist whose specialty was colorimetry, and who was an early member of the influential Inter-Society Color Council, organized in 1931 to effect the standardization of color descriptions. This need was especially vital for the U.S. Pharmacopeia, to ensure that pharmacists could distinguish among similarly colored powders and potions. Godlove offered his expertise to the Webster’s project, and from 1945, when he was hired, until his death in 1954, his insistence that dictionary entries be based on scientific principles confounded his editors, Edward Oakes and the long-suffering Philip Babcock Gove. Stamper honors many unsung female chemists, especially Godlove’s wife, Margaret, a color scientist who contributed substantially to the dictionary, even after her husband’s death. Webster’s Third was published in 1961 with more than 3,000 color entries. The new edition, she predicts, will never be done.

A fresh, irreverent history of words.