Semantic drift: "khaki"

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM
Sat Sep 15 23:05:14 UTC 2007


Very interesting article, Michael.

  BTW, the sample of "olive" at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_Drab looks to me to be closer to the (darker) U.S. Army uniform of World War I than does the sample of "olive drab," which I think is too green.  Of course, such fine distinctions are notoriously subjective.

  From what I can gather, the brown "olive drab" of WWI was designated in official publications as simply "drab."  Nevertheless, the name "olive drab" was in nearly universal use.

  My wife thinks that even "khaki" should have a greenish cast, at least acccording to some of the sportswear catalogues she looks at.  But she also agrees that that was not always true.

  For Wiki khaki kolors see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaki_%28color%29 . My own stereotype is somewhere between the "khaki" and the "light khaki."

  JL


  Michael Quinion <wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG> wrote:

  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Michael Quinion
Organization: World Wide Words
Subject: Re: Semantic drift: "khaki"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> Just what color do people understand nowadays by "khaki"? All my life I've
> subscribed to the def. of the OED: "dust-coloured; dull brownish yellow,
> drab," a kind of light to medium beige.
>
> Recently, though, I've noticed writers using "khaki" to designate the
> much darker brown, formerly used for U.S. Army uniforms (as in World
> War I) and usually designated "olive drab." Now I find Vietnam veteran
> Larry Heinemann (in _Black Virgin Mountain_) referring to the dark
> "olive-green" Army "service uniform" of the '60s as "khakis." Surely
> Heinemann knows better - or my memory is slipping.

I noticed this some years ago and indeed used it as the lead-in to a piece
about the slippery values of some colour names. See

http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/colour.htm

As I say there, to me khaki is sandy-brown. This was the colour of British
Army uniforms in my extreme youth, just after WW2, when being "in khaki"
meant being in the Army. An olive-green colour is what today's fashion
writers mean by the word. It seems to have changed through the word being
retained for the colour of army uniforms while the colour of the uniforms
has changed.


--
Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
E-mail: wordseditor at worldwidewords.org
Web: http://www.worldwidewords.org

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