means The lightest color, that of fresh snow or milk, produced by reflecting all wavelengths of visible light at once.

from From Old English 'hwit,' tracing back to a Proto-Germanic root that gave German 'weiss' and Dutch 'wit.' Linguists trace it further to a possible Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'bright' or 'to shine' — a cousin, perhaps, of words for the gleam of dawn rather than for snow or paper. So at its deepest, 'white' was less about a hue and more about light itself blazing out.