JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

   “He is too picked, to spruce, too affected, to od as it were.”–Shakespeare Love’s Labour’s Lost  (1598) v. i. 13

I just threw this together, pulling in some of the red-based pamphlet cover designs from different odd areas here–there are many many more, but this again is a selection of odd and red: OddRed, RedOdd. Or if not odd, the at least red and even, EvenRed, RedEven. 

“OddRed” isn’t a color, it just designates that red is being used in relation to something odd, which is very different from nouns or adjectives that get thrown in front of “red”, as in “blood-”, “brick-”, “flame-”, and so on, which are actual colors. OddRed is just an idea. As is EvenRed.

The OED finds “red” to be as old as OE, and defines it so: “Designating the colour of blood, a ruby, a ripe tomato, etc., and appearing in various shades at the longer-wavelength end of the visible spectrum, next to orange and opposite to violet; of or having this colour.”