mauve
/məʊv/ noun, adjective
Forms mauves mauver mauvest
- noun (historical) A rich purple synthetic dye, which faded easily, briefly popular c. 1859‒1873 and now called mauveine.
- noun A pale purple or violet colour, like the colour of the dye after it has faded.
- adjective Having a pale purple colour.
Etymology
Borrowed from French mauve (“mallow”), from Latin malva, which has a purple colour. Doublet of mallow. Coined in 1856 by the chemist William Henry Perkin, when he accidentally created the first aniline dye.
Webster’s 1913
- noun A color of a delicate purple, violet, or lilac. Mauve aniline (Chem.), a dyestuff produced artificially by the oxidation of commercial aniline, and the first discovered of the so-called coal-tar, or aniline, dyes. It consists of the sulphate of mauveïne, and is a dark brown or bronze amorphous powder, which dissolves to a beatiful purple color. Called also aniline purple, violine, etc.
Etymology [F., mallow, L. malva. So named from the similarity of the color to that of the petals of common mallow, Malva sylvestris. See Mallow.]
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “mauve”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details