True Color
The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color--from Azure to Zinc Pink
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Mar 31, 2026
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A kaleidoscopic journey through the secret history of hues—and the story of the obsessive genius behind the definitions of colors we use today, from the beloved author of Word by Word
"Wildly entertaining and bountifully informative; I couldn't have enjoyed myself more." —Benjamin Dreyer, New York Times bestselling author of Dreyer's English
begonia (n.): 3 -s : a deep pink that is bluer, lighter, and stronger than average coral (see coral 3b), bluer than fiesta, and bluer and stronger than sweet william — called also gaiety
What could "bluer than fiesta" possibly mean? While editing dictionaries for Merriam-Webster, Kory Stamper found herself drawn again and again to the whimsical color definitions in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary—especially when compared to the dry and impersonal entries that filled the rest of the volume. Stamper couldn’t help but wonder: Who was the voice behind these peculiar definitions?
Meet I. H. Godlove, an erratic but brilliant up-and-coming scientist who was one of the experts Merriam-Webster hired in 1930 to help revise the dictionary to reflect a rapidly modernizing world. His fascinating life mirrors the wild and winding journey that color science, color psychology, and color production took through the twentieth century. Stamper tracks these industries as they move into the atomic age and intertwine in strange and surprising ways, spanning two world wars and involving chemical explosions, an unexpected suicide, dramatic office politics, and an extraordinary love story.
Filled with captivating facts about color words and colors themselves—did you know that the word “puke” used to refer to a fashionable shade of reddish-brown before it was associated with vomit?—and fueled by Stamper’s inexhaustible curiosity, True Color will transform the way you see the world, from black-and-white to Technicolor.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lexicographer Stamper (Word by Word) takes readers on an uproarious journey into Merriam-Webster's somber early-20th-century office and the decades-long, behind-the-scenes kerfuffle over the seemingly simple task of defining colors. Stamper tracks the "earnest and painstaking" editorial relationship between the brilliant scientist I.H. Godlove and various harried editors at M-W, all of whom were struggling to define colors within the tension of "the democratic chaos of language and the curated precision of science." In other words, the public pictures one thing at the word purple, but a scientist might say that purple doesn't technically exist, so how should one define it? Stamper depicts the esoteric editorial wrangling and nitpicking with verve, bringing a self-serious, cloistered world to vivid life. She also poignantly profiles the devoted relationship between Godlove and his equally brilliant wife Margaret, who finished his work after his death. Beyond M-W's walls, Stamper dives into a broader color history, from the great "dye famine" of WWI to congressional debates over whether margarine should be allowed to be yellow, as well as a slew of other surprising, complicated ways color has collided with industry. Stamper writes with grace and a delightful sense of humor, particularly when making fun of her own camp (the average lexicographer's reaction to a party: "silent panic, then hives, then anaphylactic shock"). It's a scintillating journey into the prismatic heart of a subject that "touch everything."
