livid

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

> A. Murie <sagehen at SLIC.COM> replied to Kathleen Miller's question thus:



... How often has anyone here actually seen a

> person turn bluish-grey with rage? Usually the face turns red. I suspect

> that most people encounter the word only in this context, and by inference

> attach to it the typical color of an angry ("white") person's face

In my experience, the color that white-people turn when they are angry may be
either deep white or red, depending on things like blood pressure and
heredity. "White with rage" strikes me as being as experientially correct as
"ruddy with rage." And then there is the idiom "blue in the face," which may
have some connection to reality!

I suspect that our perception of reality is in this case based an example of
"the metaphors we live by" (Lakoff & Johnson's horrible old book is
nonetheless a good shorthand for the point I am trying to make here).