“One of the jobs of a lexicographer is to proofread dictionary entries. This task is more than simply reading each word in an entry: Proofreading dictionary entries includes finger stepping your way through each etymology to make sure that the dot underneath that h is supposed to be there and isn’t just fly poop, verifying that the angle brackets which introduced an example sentence were in roman and not accidentally italicized (because even though no one but a professional typesetter would ever notice it, it’s still wrong), and checking that the initial colon which starts that six-point-type definition is in boldface and surrounded by exactly one space on either side—and not an en or em space, either. It is brain-melting tedium on a microscopic scale, and I enjoy it immensely.”

“Color is so integral to our experience as humans that we can’t conceive of a world without it. It’s as much a part of our lives as air, water, and taxes. And it is maddeningly, beguilingly slippery.”

“Color psychologists and market researchers have studied how people react to color names in retail settings, and time and time again these studies show that people are more likely to purchase an item with an associative or fanciful color name over an item with a basic color name, regardless of what those actual colors are. And, more to the point, they’re also willing to pay more for the product with a fancy color name. One study even calls this the “Fancy-Name Effect.””

“The human mind is too expansive, too inventive, too frickin’ squirrelly to be content with what is immediately in front of it. Colors in context speak to us in certain ways: When it comes to describing colors in a contextless void, it seems artificial—contrived, even. In that way, it’s just like language: It becomes something worth watching only when it’s about something outside itself.”