As the server welcomed us to the restaurant, she complimented Pam’s mustard-colored sweater. I knew what she meant by “mustard-colored” but I’d never have called it that. When I name a color, it’s likely to be one of the six primary and secondary colors. If a color is “mustard”, I’ll figure that since it’s within the 60 degree arc of the color wheel occupied by yellow that I’d call it yellow.

I’ll let other folks talk about “mustard-colored” or chartreuse or fuchsia or vermilion. I’ve been told that this is a guy thing.

The first computer color schemes must have had guys in mind. When I first started working with PCs back in 1992, I was introduced to the 4bit mode of the VGA color palette. This palette had 8 colors including black, white, primary and secondary colors, and, of all things, cyan. For reasons that I don’t understand, purple is called magenta. To add variety, they added light versions on the 8 colors for a total of 16. If you’re wondering, black became gray and white became intense white.

I’m kinda suspicious of the cyan thing though.