The word “purple”, spelled purpel in Middle English, from purpul in Old English, was first recorded in Northumbrian, in the Lindisfarne Gospels.
This involved a dissimilation (changing one of two identical sounds to a different, similar one) of purpure, borrowed from the Latin purpura in the ninth century, coming from the Greek porphyra, which most likely had a Semitic origin.
Meaning “purple dye, a purple garment”, the word for the hue is in fact derived from and references the source of the pigment: the name of several species of predatory Mediterranean Sea snails whose mucus from one of their glands was extracted and boiled down.
The process of extracting this biological pigment for use as a fabric dye was first practised in the Phoenician city of Tyre as early as the 14th century BC – thus this colour is known as Tyrian purple. Some historians claim that the name Phoenicia derives from Greek phoinos, meaning “dark red”, referring to the dye.
Production of the pigment was time- and labour-intensive: “10,000 shellfish would produce 1 gram of dyestuff, and that would only dye the hem of a garment in a deep colour”, according to historian Béatrice Caseau.
Its striking purple-red hues and resistance to fading, combined with difficult production, made the pigment costly and desirable.
Thus, in Roman times, purple was a status symbol for the elite; by Byzantine times, the colour was associated with the emperor (although Julius Caesar had already donned the all-purple toga purpurea).
Purple thus developed the figurative meaning of imperial or regal power; Tyrian purple is also known as royal purple or imperial purple.
With a purple robe used to mock Jesus (as “King of the Jews”) at his crucifixion, also foreshadowed in the Old Testament, purple is a symbolic liturgical colour in the Lenten period.
The phrase “born in (or to) the purple”, originally the Greek Porphyrogénnētos/Πορφυρογέννητος literally “purple-born”, Latinised as Porphyrogenitus, referred to members of a royal family born during their parent’s reign, a concept known from the sixth century.
This makes reference to the wearing of imperial purple, or the special chamber in the Great Palace of Constantinople for the child’s birth and empress’ confinement, veneered in imperial porphyry. This notion has expanded to include all children born of prominent or high-ranking parents.
Purple prose, originating in Roman poet Horace’s description of purpureus pannus “purple patches” in his Ars Poetica (circa 20BC), denotes an irrelevant and excessively ornate passage – alluding to purple’s association with grandeur.
