Colour

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Colour meaning across cultures

Lesson 18 of 27 in Colour.

Color Meanings / Color Symbolism in Different Cultures · Andre le Roux
Lesson

Colour meanings are conventions, and they differ enough between cultures to reverse. White is associated with mourning across much of South and East Asia and with weddings in much of Europe and North America. Red signals luck and celebration in China and India and danger or debt in others.

cool recedeswarm comes forward
Warm colours advancing, cool colours receding.
A split scene with a bride in a white gown under falling petals on the left and a family dressed in white sitting quietly at a memorial with an oil lamp on the right.
White worn at a wedding on one side and at a mourning on the other. The same colour can carry opposite meanings from one culture to the next.
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  1. Question 1, locked

    Which of these words means this? “Meanings attached to colours by a culture. Learned, local, and changeable.”

    • Legibility
    • Structural colour
    • Colour symbolism
    • Banding
  2. Question 2, locked

    Which of these words means this? “White in much of South and East Asia, black in much of Europe. A useful reminder that nothing here is universal.”

    • Mourning colour
    • Colour symbolism
    • Contrast
    • Log
  3. Question 3, locked

    Which of these words means this? “One associated with luck or celebration. Red across much of East and South Asia.”

    • Auspicious colour
    • Substantive dye
    • Anchor
    • AA

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