Reportedly purple wasn’t a word when they called it a red onion.
Plenty-Battle6826
Purple wasn’t invented yet
seansy5000
They turn red when pickled…
The only time it’s more purple than red is when it’s raw. I could see it either way. Just doesn’t seem crazy to me for it to be called either or.
retailguy_again
For the same reason that purple cabbage is called red cabbage.
womp-the-womper
Wait until he hears about red tailed hawks
Kokojijo
In my house, they’re purple onions. My daughter was not yet two, and I was showing her the produce we had just bought and going over colors. She refused to accept red onions. Purple, she insisted, looking at me like I was crazy for calling them red. And she’s right, I realized. So we call them purple.
hombre_bu
Red heads have orange hair
Russell_Jimmies
Many modern names of colors in English only appeared in the last approximately 1,000 years. The first recorded use of the word “purple” was around 900 ad. Before that, purple-colored things were called red.
The word for the color orange is even newer – it comes from the name of the fruit instead of the other way around. Until the late 1400s things that were orange-colored were called yellow-red instead.
carlan29
In Spanish the purple color of the onion is acknowledged and they’re called “cebolla morada”.
oolongvanilla
1. As others pointed out, purple wasn’t widely recognized as a basic color in the English language when red onions were named. Different languages have different numbers of basic colors – Ancient Chinese didn’t really distinguish between blue and green until relatively late in history so the ancient word that was used for both back then can still be found used to describe both green and blue things like blue-and-white pottery as well as green peppers at the same time. Same with red and purple in English, so we have red onions and red cabbage.
2. Sometimes red onions really do look more reddish, and you can see pictures of reddish red onions by searching Google images. It might have to do with the pH level of the soil they were grown in – Similarly, red cabbage is variously called red cabbage or blue cabbage in various German-speaking regions related to soil acidity.
dreamer0303
I call them purple onions
lickmethoroughly
They used to say the sky and ocean were green because nobody made a word for blue yet
13 Comments
Can the mods please ban TikTok videos?
Reportedly purple wasn’t a word when they called it a red onion.
Purple wasn’t invented yet
They turn red when pickled…
The only time it’s more purple than red is when it’s raw. I could see it either way. Just doesn’t seem crazy to me for it to be called either or.
For the same reason that purple cabbage is called red cabbage.
Wait until he hears about red tailed hawks
In my house, they’re purple onions. My daughter was not yet two, and I was showing her the produce we had just bought and going over colors. She refused to accept red onions. Purple, she insisted, looking at me like I was crazy for calling them red. And she’s right, I realized. So we call them purple.
Red heads have orange hair
Many modern names of colors in English only appeared in the last approximately 1,000 years. The first recorded use of the word “purple” was around 900 ad. Before that, purple-colored things were called red.
The word for the color orange is even newer – it comes from the name of the fruit instead of the other way around. Until the late 1400s things that were orange-colored were called yellow-red instead.
In Spanish the purple color of the onion is acknowledged and they’re called “cebolla morada”.
1. As others pointed out, purple wasn’t widely recognized as a basic color in the English language when red onions were named. Different languages have different numbers of basic colors – Ancient Chinese didn’t really distinguish between blue and green until relatively late in history so the ancient word that was used for both back then can still be found used to describe both green and blue things like blue-and-white pottery as well as green peppers at the same time. Same with red and purple in English, so we have red onions and red cabbage.
2. Sometimes red onions really do look more reddish, and you can see pictures of reddish red onions by searching Google images. It might have to do with the pH level of the soil they were grown in – Similarly, red cabbage is variously called red cabbage or blue cabbage in various German-speaking regions related to soil acidity.
I call them purple onions
They used to say the sky and ocean were green because nobody made a word for blue yet