[apostlion]

I've seen somewhere a test for how many color words are there in the language - only color-words which do not correspond to a specific material or plant which color is emulated are accepted. So “red” or “blue” is fine, as is “piros” or “vörös” - but “sky blue” (color of sky), “ruby” (color of the gemstone) or “scarlet” (color of the Scarlet cloth) are not.

[prof_hobart]

So orange wouldn't be counted as a colour in English? I'm not sure what value there is in measuring the amount of colour names in a language based purely on their etymology.

[apostlion]

Orange wouldn't. By this logic, many oddities in color naming can be abstracted over languages, see for example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Color_Terms:_Their_Univer...

[prof_hobart]

Interesting. Does this hold true for every single language?

[currymesurprise]

As a correction to my sibling comment, orange _is_ counted as a color in English. The most widely-cited list of colors in English, as seen on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_... for example is that English has eleven basic colors: white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray. That page also provides criteria for being considered a basic color term.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

"the Scarlet cloth", what's that?

It may have referred to something specific once, but now it's just a colour.

There are many examples of things that are just a part of speech now. e.g. when was the last time you had the opportunity to actually "put the cart before the horse" or "strike while the iron is hot".