For our July webinar we are honoured to have Kory Stamper, author of True Color (2026) and Word by Word (2017), to discuss the fascinating story of how a dictionary helped shape one of the most innovative colour standards of the early 20th century. Please help us to spread word of this fascinating event to your friends and colleagues.
Colour standards rely heavily on colour chips to covey important information about a colour to a layperson--but what if your colour standard can't rely on colour chips? Is there a commonsense way to accurately describe fine colour distinctions so that the scientist, artist, fashion forecaster, and bystander are on equal footing? This is exactly the task undertaken by a group of colour specialists in America in the early 20th century as they attempted, at the behest of several organisations and at least one dictionary, to set down a plain-language yet rigorous method to define colour. But there were bumps in the road from the outset: What are the basic colour terms, and why should "olive" be one? How colourimetrically "slightly" is "slightly redder"? Why are there so many damned "aquas" in this commercial colour world, and why aren't any of them actually aqua? Kory Stamper shares the surprising story of how a dictionary helped shape one of the most innovative colour standards of the early 20th century--a colour standard backed by the government and the widespread support from art, science, and industry, that nonetheless went exactly nowhere.
Kory Stamper is an author and lexicographer who has spent near 30 years thinking (too deeply) about how to define the words that define us. In her 20 years as an editor at Merriam-Webster, she defined everything from "blue plate special" to "god" and answered dictionary user questions on everything from what colour "nude" really is to why it's "toothpaste" and not "teethpaste." She has written about her time as a dictionary writer in Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries (2017, Pantheon). Her moderate obsession with colour terms and colour names began during her time at Merriam-Webster, and led her to archives across the U.S., several strangers' homes, and ultimately to her second nonfiction book, True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color—from Azure to Zinc Pink (2026, Knopf). Though no longer a workaday commercial lexicographer, she keeps her hand in by doing language revitalisation work with the indigenous Miami Nation of Indiana, where she is currently puzzling over how to best define the Miami colour term that refers to some blues and some greens (but not all blues nor all greens).
And stay tuned for our August webinar with Professor Elisa Cordero-Jahr of the School of Design of the Faculty of Architecture and Arts, Universidad Austral de Chile speaking on her "Color chart of southern Chile" project.
REGISTRATION
Registration is now open for CSA members and will open for nonmembers on July 12.
This event is free but registration by midnight AEST on Friday July 24 is essential. Limit: 100 registrants worldwide. Successful registrants will be notified by reply email and will be sent the Zoom link and instructions shortly before the event.
