amber/yellow lights

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:42 PM -0500 11/28/01, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>    Greetings from my lunch hour at the Red Light Camera unit of Parking
>Violations.  One frequent exuces (it's coded) is that the light was yellow.
>I've heard "amber" used, but very infrequently.  About five people a year use
>"amber"--not really enough for a statistical sampling.
>    I'll try to look through my papers for "steam beer" tonight.

Felicitous juxtaposition by Barry there, since most current
instantiations of "amber" I've come across (for the brownish-yellow
color rather than directly for the jewel) are in application to a
type of beer (not steam beer, however).  Amsterdam Amber (from New
York) is a case in point.

The word itself (via "ambergris") is evidently from Arabic.

larry