the.com/scarlet
the red that walked off the cardinal's robe and into your sins.
means A brilliant, slightly orange-leaning red, often used to suggest sin, passion, or shame (as in 'scarlet woman' or 'scarlet letter').
from From Old French 'escarlate' and medieval Latin 'scarlatum,' which originally named not a color at all but a rich, expensive cloth — a fine wool fabric. Because that prized cloth was so often dyed a vivid red, the name of the fabric slipped over onto the hue itself. The deeper root is likely the Persian 'saqirlat,' a costly dyed textile, hinting at a word that traveled the trade routes westward. So 'scarlet' began as a thing you could wear, and only later became the color you wore it in.
- royal price
- once cost more than gold to dye
- insect origin
- true scarlet came from crushed kermes bugs
- cardinal red
- Catholic cardinals wear it to symbolize blood
- branded letter
- Hester Prynne's A made it eternally scandalous
- fever's name
- a disease borrowed its vivid rash hue
the scarlet letter — nathaniel hawthorne's 1850 novel about hester prynne forced to wear a scarlet 'a' in puritan boston
scarlet macaw — large red parrot native to central and south america, one of the world's largest flying parrots
scarlet fever — bacterial infection caused by group a streptococcus, historically killed millions before antibiotics in the 1920s