Puce is not a yellow, chartreuse is not a red

[mneme]

Has anyone else ever noticed that there are certain color words that feel like they -should- be onemonapeic (or onemonapigmentic, anyway) -- but aren't -- because they actually stand for another color entirely?

Any idea why? (ok, Puce is easy; it should be an awful yellow or yellow-green color (and oddly, Firefox translates puce as a light green). But it isn't; it's a niceish dark pink biot sure why my hindbrain is convinced that chartreuse should be a red or purplish color, not a green).

Are there any others people can think of?

Comments

[fiddledragon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, cerise is definitely a bright pale blue.

Going with the most common onomotopoaic patterns, I think I'd expect people to map low vowels to darker colors and high vowels to lighter/brighter colors. I wonder if that happens?