HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Yellow is the
color Color (or colour in English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, see spelling differences) is the visual perception based on the electromagnetic spectrum. Though co ...
between
green Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by a com ...
and orange on the spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a dominant wavelength of roughly 575585 nm. It is a primary color in subtractive color systems, used in painting or color printing. In the RGB color model, used to create colors on television and computer screens, yellow is a secondary color made by combining red and green at equal intensity. Carotenoids give the characteristic yellow color to autumn leaves, corn, canaries, daffodils, and lemons, as well as
egg yolk Among animals which produce eggs, the yolk (; also known as the vitellus) is the nutrient-bearing portion of the egg whose primary function is to supply food for the development of the embryo. Some types of egg contain no yolk, for example bec ...
s, buttercups, and bananas. They absorb light energy and protect plants from photo damage in some cases.
Sunlight Sunlight is the portion of the electromagnetic radiation which is emitted by the Sun (i.e. solar radiation) and received by the Earth, in particular the visible spectrum, visible light perceptible to the human eye as well as invisible infrare ...
has a slight yellowish hue when the Sun is near the horizon, due to atmospheric scattering of shorter wavelengths (green, blue, and violet). Because it was widely available, yellow ochre pigment was one of the first colors used in art; the
Lascaux Lascaux ( , ; , "Lascaux Cave") is a network of caves near the village of Montignac, Dordogne, Montignac, in the Departments of France, department of Dordogne in southwestern France. Over 600 Parietal art, parietal cave painting, wall paintin ...
cave in France has a painting of a yellow horse 17,000 years old. Ochre and orpiment pigments were used to represent gold and skin color in Egyptian tombs, then in the murals in Roman villas. In the early Christian church, yellow was the color associated with the Pope and the golden keys of the Kingdom, but it was also associated with Judas Iscariot and used to mark heretics. In the 20th century, Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe were forced to wear a yellow star. In China, bright yellow was the color of the Middle Kingdom, and could be worn only by the emperor and his household; special guests were welcomed on a yellow carpet.Cited in Eva Heller (2000), ''Psychologie de la couleur – effets et symboliques'', p. 82. According to surveys in Europe, Canada, the United States and elsewhere, yellow is the color people most often associate with amusement, gentleness, humor, happiness, and spontaneity; however it can also be associated with duplicity, envy, jealousy, greed, justice, and, in the U.S., cowardice. In Iran it has connotations of pallor/sickness, but also wisdom and connection. In China and many Asian countries, it is seen as the color of royalty, nobility, respect, happiness, glory, harmony and wisdom.


Etymology

The word ''yellow'' is from the
Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
(
oblique case In grammar, an oblique ( abbreviated ; from ) or objective case ( abbr. ) is a nominal case other than the nominative case and, sometimes, the vocative. A noun or pronoun in the oblique case can generally appear in any role except as subject, ...
), meaning "yellow, and yellowish", derived from the
Proto-Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic languages, Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from ...
word ''gelwaz'' "yellow". It has the same
Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...
base, ', as the words ''gold'' and ''yell''; ''gʰel-'' means both bright and gleaming, and to cry out. The English term is related to other Germanic words for ''yellow'', namely Scots ', East Frisian ''jeel'', West Frisian ', Dutch ', German ', and Swedish and Norwegian '. According to the ''
Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...
'', the oldest known use of this word in English is from ''The Epinal Glossary'' in 700.


Science and nature


Optics, color printing, and computer screens

File:CMYK color swatches.svg, Color printing typically uses ink of four colors:
cyan Cyan () is the color between blue and green on the visible spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a predominant wavelength between 500 and 520 nm, between the wavelengths of green and blue. In the subtractive color system, or CMYK c ...
,
magenta Magenta () is a purple-red color. On color wheels of the RGB color model, RGB (additive) and subtractive color, CMY (subtractive) color models, it is located precisely midway between blue and red. It is one of the four colors of ink used in colo ...
, yellow, and key (black). When CMY "primaries" are combined at full strength, the resulting "secondary" mixtures are red, green, and blue. File:SubtractiveColor.svg, Mixing all three theoretically results in black, but imperfect ink formulations do not give true black, which is why an additional ''K'' component is needed. File:NIEdot367.jpg, An example of color printing from 1902. Combining images in yellow, magenta and cyan creates a full-color picture. This is called the CMYK color model. File:Red and green make yellow.png, On a computer display, yellow is created by combining green and red light at the right intensity on a black screen.
Yellow is found between green and red on the spectrum of visible light. It is the color the human eye sees when it looks at light with a dominant wavelength between 570 and 590 nanometers. In color printing, yellow is one of the three subtractive primary colors of ink along with
magenta Magenta () is a purple-red color. On color wheels of the RGB color model, RGB (additive) and subtractive color, CMY (subtractive) color models, it is located precisely midway between blue and red. It is one of the four colors of ink used in colo ...
and
cyan Cyan () is the color between blue and green on the visible spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a predominant wavelength between 500 and 520 nm, between the wavelengths of green and blue. In the subtractive color system, or CMYK c ...
. Together with
black Black is a color that results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without chroma, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness.Eva Heller, ''P ...
, they can be overlaid in the right combination to print any full color image. (See the CMYK color model). A particular yellow is used, called Process yellow (also known as "pigment yellow", "printer's yellow", and "canary yellow"). Process yellow is not an RGB color, and there is no fixed conversion from CMYK primaries to RGB. Different formulations are used for printer's ink, so there can be variations in the printed color that is pure yellow ink. The yellow on a color television or computer screen is created in a completely different way; by combining green and red light at the right level of intensity. (See RGB color model).


Complementary colors

Traditionally, the complementary color of yellow is purple; the two colors are opposite each other on the color wheel long used by painters.
Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2,100 artworks ...
, an avid student of color theory, used combinations of yellow and purple in several of his paintings for the maximum contrast and harmony. Hunt defines that "two colors are complementary when it is possible to reproduce the tristimulus values of a specified achromatic stimulus by an additive mixture of these two stimuli." That is, when two colored lights can be mixed to match a specified white (achromatic, non-colored) light, the colors of those two lights are complementary. This definition, however, does not constrain what version of white will be specified. In the nineteenth century, the scientists Grassmann and Helmholtz did experiments in which they concluded that finding a good complement for spectral yellow was difficult, but that the result was indigo, that is, a wavelength that today's color scientists would call violet or purple. Helmholtz says "Yellow and indigo blue" are complements. Grassmann reconstructs Newton's category boundaries in terms of wavelengths and says "This indigo therefore falls within the limits of color between which, according to Helmholtz, the complementary colors of yellow lie." Newton's own color circle has yellow directly opposite the boundary between indigo and violet. These results, that the complement of yellow is a wavelength shorter than 450 nm, are derivable from the modern CIE 1931 system of colorimetry if it is assumed that the yellow is about 580 nm or shorter wavelength, and the specified white is the color of a blackbody radiator of temperature 2800 K or lower (that is, the white of an ordinary incandescent light bulb). More typically, with a daylight-colored or around 5000 to 6000 K white, the complement of yellow will be in the blue wavelength range, which is the standard modern answer for the complement of yellow. Because of the characteristics of paint pigments and use of different color wheels, painters traditionally regard the complement of yellow as the color indigo or blue-violet.


Lasers

Laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word ''laser'' originated as an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radi ...
s emitting in the yellow part of the spectrum are less common and more expensive than most other colors. In commercial products diode pumped solid state ( DPSS) technology is employed to create the yellow light. An infrared laser diode at 808 nm is used to pump a crystal of neodymium-doped yttrium vanadium oxide (Nd:YVO4) or neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet (Nd:YAG) and induces it to emit at two frequencies (281.76 THz and 223.39 THz: 1064 nm and 1342 nm wavelengths) simultaneously. This deeper infrared light is then passed through another crystal containing potassium, titanium and phosphorus (KTP), whose non-linear properties generate light at a frequency that is the sum of the two incident beams (505.15 THz); in this case corresponding to the wavelength of 593.5 nm ("yellow"). This wavelength is also available, though even more rarely, from a helium–neon laser. However, this not a true yellow, as it exceeds 590 nm. A variant of this same DPSS technology using slightly different starting frequencies was made available in 2010, producing a wavelength of 589 nm, which is considered a true yellow color. The use of yellow lasers at 589 nm and 594 nm have recently become more widespread thanks to the field of
optogenetics Optogenetics is a biological technique to control the activity of neurons or other cell types with light. This is achieved by Gene expression, expression of Channelrhodopsin, light-sensitive ion channels, Halorhodopsin, pumps or Photoactivated ade ...
.


Astronomy

Star A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...
s of spectral classes F and G have color temperatures that make them look "yellowish". The first astronomer to classify stars according to their color was F. G. W. Struve in 1827. One of his classifications was , or yellow, and this roughly corresponded to stars in the modern spectral range F5 to K0. The Strömgren photometric system for stellar classification includes a 'y' or yellow filter that is centered at a wavelength of 550 nm and has a bandwidth of 20–30 nm. Supergiant stars are rarely yellow supergiants because F and G class supergiants are physically unstable; they are most often a transitional phase between blue supergiants and red supergiants. Some yellow supergiants, the Cepheid variables, pulsate with a period proportional to their absolute magnitude; hence, if their
apparent magnitude Apparent magnitude () is a measure of the Irradiance, brightness of a star, astronomical object or other celestial objects like artificial satellites. Its value depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance, and any extinction (astronomy), ...
is known, the distance to them can be calculated with great precision. Cepheid variables were hence used to determine distances within and beyond the
Milky Way The Milky Way or Milky Way Galaxy is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the #Appearance, galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars in other arms of the galax ...
galaxy. The most famous example is the current North Pole star, Polaris.


Biology

Autumn
leaves A leaf (: leaves) is a principal appendage of the stem of a vascular plant, usually borne laterally above ground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", while the leaves, stem, ...
, yellow flowers, bananas, oranges and other yellow fruits all contain carotenoids, yellow and red organic pigments that are found in the
chloroplast A chloroplast () is a type of membrane-bound organelle, organelle known as a plastid that conducts photosynthesis mostly in plant cell, plant and algae, algal cells. Chloroplasts have a high concentration of chlorophyll pigments which captur ...
s and
chromoplast Chromoplasts are plastids, heterogeneous organelles responsible for pigment synthesis and storage in specific Photosynthesis, photosynthetic eukaryotes. It is thought (according to symbiogenesis) that like all other plastids including chloroplast ...
s of plants and some other
photosynthetic Photosynthesis ( ) is a Biological system, system of biological processes by which Photoautotrophism, photosynthetic organisms, such as most plants, algae, and cyanobacteria, convert light energy, typically from sunlight, into the chemical ener ...
organisms like
algae Algae ( , ; : alga ) is an informal term for any organisms of a large and diverse group of photosynthesis, photosynthetic organisms that are not plants, and includes species from multiple distinct clades. Such organisms range from unicellular ...
, some bacteria and some fungi. They serve two key roles in plants and algae: they absorb light energy for use in
photosynthesis Photosynthesis ( ) is a system of biological processes by which photosynthetic organisms, such as most plants, algae, and cyanobacteria, convert light energy, typically from sunlight, into the chemical energy necessary to fuel their metabo ...
, and they protect the green
chlorophyll Chlorophyll is any of several related green pigments found in cyanobacteria and in the chloroplasts of algae and plants. Its name is derived from the Greek words (, "pale green") and (, "leaf"). Chlorophyll allows plants to absorb energy ...
from photodamage. In late summer, as
daylight Daylight is the combination of all direct and indirect sunlight during the daytime. This includes direct sunlight, diffuse sky radiation, and (often) both of these reflected by Earth and terrestrial objects, like landforms and buildings. Sunlig ...
hours shorten and temperatures cool, the veins that carry fluids into and out of the leaf are gradually closed off. The water and mineral intake into the leaf is reduced, slowly at first, and then more rapidly. It is during this time that the chlorophyll begins to decrease. As the chlorophyll diminishes, the yellow and red carotenoids become more and more visible, creating the classic
autumn leaf color Autumn leaf color is a phenomenon that affects the normally green leaves of many deciduous trees and shrubs by which they take on, during a few weeks in the autumn season, various shades of yellow, orange, red, purple, and brown. The phenomenon ...
. Carotenoids are common in many living things; they give the characteristic color to carrots, maize, daffodils,
rutabaga Rutabaga (; North American English) or swede (British English and some Commonwealth English) is a root vegetable, a form of ''Brassica napus'' (which also includes rapeseed). Other names include Swedish turnip, neep (Scots language, Scots), an ...
s, buttercups and bananas. They are responsible for the red of cooked
lobster Lobsters are Malacostraca, malacostracans Decapoda, decapod crustaceans of the family (biology), family Nephropidae or its Synonym (taxonomy), synonym Homaridae. They have long bodies with muscular tails and live in crevices or burrows on th ...
s, the pink of flamingoes and salmon and the yellow of canaries and
egg yolk Among animals which produce eggs, the yolk (; also known as the vitellus) is the nutrient-bearing portion of the egg whose primary function is to supply food for the development of the embryo. Some types of egg contain no yolk, for example bec ...
s. Xanthophylls are the most common yellow
pigment A pigment is a powder used to add or alter color or change visual appearance. Pigments are completely or nearly solubility, insoluble and reactivity (chemistry), chemically unreactive in water or another medium; in contrast, dyes are colored sub ...
s that form one of two major divisions of the carotenoid group. The name is from Greek ''xanthos'' (, "yellow") + ''phyllon'' (, "leaf"). Xanthophylls are most commonly found in the leaves of green plants, but they also find their way into animals through the food they eat. For example, the yellow color of chicken egg yolks, fat, and skin comes from the feed the chickens consume. Chicken farmers understand this, and often add xanthophylls, usually lutein, to make the egg yolks more yellow. Bananas are green when they are picked because of the chlorophyll their skin contains. Once picked, they begin to ripen;
hormones A hormone (from the Greek participle , "setting in motion") is a class of signaling molecules in multicellular organisms that are sent to distant organs or tissues by complex biological processes to regulate physiology and behavior. Hormones a ...
in the bananas convert amino acids into ethylene gas, which stimulates the production of several enzymes. These enzymes start to change the color, texture and flavor of the banana. The green chlorophyll supply is stopped and the yellow color of the carotenoids replaces it; eventually, as the enzymes continue their work, the cell walls break down and the bananas turn brown. File:Fall colors near the Eagle Lake trailhead.jpg, Autumn colors along the Eagle River near Anchorage,
Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...
File:Cornwall Daffodils.jpg, Daffodils in Cornwall File:Bananas.jpg, Bananas, like autumn
leaves A leaf (: leaves) is a principal appendage of the stem of a vascular plant, usually borne laterally above ground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", while the leaves, stem, ...
, canaries and egg yolks, get their yellow color from natural pigments called carotenoids. File:Raw egg.jpg, The yolk of a raw egg. The color comes from the xanthophyll carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin File:Duckling chicks (Unsplash).jpg, Duckling chicks


Fish

* Yellowtail is the common name for dozens of different fish species that have yellow tails or a yellow body. Most of the time, yellowtail (fish) actually refers to Japanese amberjack, a fish that lives between Japan and Hawaii. * Yellowfin tuna (''Thunnus albacares'') is a species of tuna, having bright yellow anal and second dorsal fins. Found in tropical and subtropical seas and weighing up to , it is caught as a replacement for depleted stocks of bluefin tuna. * Smallmouth yellowfish (Labeobarbus aeneus) is a species of
ray-finned fish Actinopterygii (; ), members of which are known as ray-finned fish or actinopterygians, is a class of bony fish that comprise over 50% of living vertebrate species. They are so called because of their lightly built fins made of webbings of sk ...
in the genus Labeobarbus. It has become an invasive species in rivers of the Eastern Cape, South Africa, such as the Mbhashe River.


Insects

* The yellow-fever mosquito (''Aedes aegypti'') is a mosquito so named because it transmits dengue fever and yellow fever, the mosquito-borne viruses. * Yellowjackets are black-and-yellow
wasp A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder ...
s of the genus ''Vespula'' or ''Dolichovespula'' (though some can be black-and-white, the most notable of these being the bald-faced hornet, ''Dolichovespula maculata''). They can be identified by their distinctive black-and-yellow color, small size (slightly larger than a bee), and entirely black antennae.


Trees

* Populus tremuloides is a
deciduous In the fields of horticulture and botany, the term deciduous () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed Leaf, leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, aft ...
tree native to cooler areas of North America, one of several species referred to by the common name
aspen Aspen is a common name for certain tree species in the Populus sect. Populus, of the ''Populus'' (poplar) genus. Species These species are called aspens: * ''Populus adenopoda'' – Chinese aspen (China, south of ''P. tremula'') * ''Populus da ...
. ''Populus tremuloides'' is the most widely distributed tree in North America, being found from Canada to central Mexico. * The yellow birch (''Betula alleghaniensis'') is a birch species native to eastern North America, from
Nova Scotia Nova Scotia is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada, located on its east coast. It is one of the three Maritime Canada, Maritime provinces and Population of Canada by province and territory, most populous province in Atlan ...
,
New Brunswick New Brunswick is a Provinces and Territories of Canada, province of Canada, bordering Quebec to the north, Nova Scotia to the east, the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the northeast, the Bay of Fundy to the southeast, and the U.S. state of Maine to ...
, and southern
Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...
west to
Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...
, and south in the Appalachian Mountains to northern Georgia. They are medium-sized
deciduous In the fields of horticulture and botany, the term deciduous () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed Leaf, leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, aft ...
trees and can reach about tall, trunks up to in diameter. The bark is smooth and yellow-bronze, and the wood is extensively used for flooring, cabinetry, and toothpicks. * The Thorny Yellowwood is an Australian rainforest tree which are valued for their deep yellow-white wood. * Yellow poplar is a common name for ''
Liriodendron ''Liriodendron'' () is a genus of two species of characteristically large trees, deciduous tree, deciduous over most of their populations, in the magnolia family (biology), family (Magnoliaceae). These trees are widely known by the common name ...
'', the tuliptree. The common name is inaccurate as this genus is not related to poplars. * The '' Handroanthus albus'' is an urban tree with yellow flowers native to the Cerrado of Brazil.


History, art, and fashion


Prehistory

Yellow, in the form of yellow ochre pigment made from clay, was one of the first colors used in prehistoric cave art. The cave of
Lascaux Lascaux ( , ; , "Lascaux Cave") is a network of caves near the village of Montignac, Dordogne, Montignac, in the Departments of France, department of Dordogne in southwestern France. Over 600 Parietal art, parietal cave painting, wall paintin ...
has an image of a horse colored with yellow estimated to be 17,300 years old.


Ancient history

In Ancient
Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...
, yellow was associated with gold, which was considered to be imperishable, eternal and indestructible. The skin and bones of the gods were believed to be made of gold. The Egyptians used yellow extensively in tomb paintings; they usually used either yellow ochre or the brilliant orpiment, though it was made of arsenic and was highly toxic. A small paintbox with orpiment pigment was found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun. Men were always shown with brown faces, women with yellow ochre or gold faces. The ancient Romans used yellow in their paintings to represent gold and also in skin tones. It is found frequently in the murals of
Pompeii Pompeii ( ; ) was a city in what is now the municipality of Pompei, near Naples, in the Campania region of Italy. Along with Herculaneum, Stabiae, and Villa Boscoreale, many surrounding villas, the city was buried under of volcanic ash and p ...
. File:Lascaux2.jpg, Image of a horse colored with yellow ochre from
Lascaux Lascaux ( , ; , "Lascaux Cave") is a network of caves near the village of Montignac, Dordogne, Montignac, in the Departments of France, department of Dordogne in southwestern France. Over 600 Parietal art, parietal cave painting, wall paintin ...
cave. File:Tomb of Nakht.jpg, Paintings in the Tomb of Nakht in
ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...
(15th century BC). File:Harfenspielerin Römisches Fresko.jpg, Yellow ochre was often used in wall paintings in Ancient Roman villas and towns. File:Mosaic of Justinianus I - Basilica San Vitale (Ravenna).jpg, Byzantine art made lavish use of gold, seen in this detail of the
mosaic A mosaic () is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/Mortar (masonry), mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and ...
of the Emperor
Justinian Justinian I (, ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was Roman emperor from 527 to 565. His reign was marked by the ambitious but only partly realized ''renovatio imperii'', or "restoration of the Empire". This ambition was ...
from the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy (before 547 AD). File:Flag of Palaeologus Dynasty.svg, The flag of the Paleologus dynasty of Byzantine emperors was red and gold.


Post-classical history

During the Post-Classical period, yellow became firmly established as the color of Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed
Jesus Christ Jesus (AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the Jesus in Chris ...
, even though the Bible never describes his clothing. From this connection, yellow also took on associations with envy, jealousy and duplicity. The tradition started in the Renaissance of marking non-Christian outsiders, such as Jews, with the color yellow. In 16th-century Spain, those accused of
heresy Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, particularly the accepted beliefs or religious law of a religious organization. A heretic is a proponent of heresy. Heresy in Heresy in Christian ...
and who refused to renounce their views were compelled to come before the Spanish Inquisition dressed in a yellow cape. The color yellow has been historically associated with moneylenders and finance. The National Pawnbrokers Association's logo depicts three golden spheres hanging from a bar, referencing the three bags of gold that the patron saint of pawnbroking, St. Nicholas, holds in his hands. Additionally, the symbol of three golden orbs is found in the coat of arms of the
House of Medici The House of Medici ( , ; ) was an Italian banking family and political dynasty that first consolidated power in the Republic of Florence under Cosimo de' Medici and his grandson Lorenzo de' Medici, Lorenzo "the Magnificent" during the first h ...
, a famous fifteenth-century Italian dynasty of bankers and lenders. File:Thomas Becket Murder.JPG, alt=Saffron was sometimes used as a pigment in Medieval manuscripts, such as this page showing the murder of Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. (Circa 1200)., Saffron was sometimes used as a pigment in Medieval manuscripts, such as this page showing the murder of Thomas Becket at
Canterbury Cathedral Canterbury Cathedral is the cathedral of the archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual leader of the Church of England and symbolic leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Located in Canterbury, Kent, it is one of the oldest Christianity, Ch ...
, 1200 File:Giotto - Scrovegni - -31- - Kiss of Judas.jpg, The ''Kiss of Judas'' (1304–06) by Giotto di Bondone, followed the Medieval tradition of clothing Judas Iscariot in a yellow toga. File:Robert Dudley.jpg, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester (1560–1565) File:Young Man in a Yellow Robe c1630-1631 Jan Lievens.jpg, alt=Young Man in a Yellow Robe Jan Lievens, c. 1630–1631, ''Young Man in a Yellow Robe'' Jan Lievens, 1630–1631 File:Johannes Vermeer - Het melkmeisje - Google Art Project.jpg, alt=The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer (c. 1658), ''The Milkmaid'' by Johannes Vermeer, 1658


Modern history


18th and 19th centuries

The 18th and 19th century saw the discovery and manufacture of synthetic pigments and dyes, which quickly replaced the traditional yellows made from arsenic, cow urine, and other substances. ,
Jean-Honoré Fragonard Jean-Honoré Fragonard (; 5 April 1732 (birth/baptism certificate) – 22 August 1806) was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific art ...
painted '' A Young Girl Reading''. She is dressed in a bright saffron yellow dress. This painting is "considered by many critics to be among Fragonard's most appealing and masterly". The 19th-century British painter J. M. W. Turner was one of the first in that century to use yellow to create moods and emotions, the way romantic composers were using music. His painting ''Rain, Steam, and Speed – the Great Central Railway'' was dominated by glowing yellow clouds. Georges Seurat used the new synthetic colors in his experimental paintings composed of tiny points of primary colors, particularly in his famous ''Sunday Afternoon on the Isle de la Grand jatte'' (1884–86). He did not know that the new synthetic yellow pigment, zinc yellow or zinc chromate, which he used in the light green lawns, was highly unstable and would quickly turn brown. The painter
Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2,100 artworks ...
was a particular admirer of the color yellow, the color of sunshine. Writing to his sister from the south of France in 1888, he wrote, "Now we are having beautiful warm, windless weather that is very beneficial to me. The sun, a light that for lack of a better word I can only call yellow, bright sulfur yellow, pale lemon gold. How beautiful yellow is!" In Arles, Van Gogh painted sunflowers inside a small house he rented at 2 Place Lamartine, a house painted with a color that Van Gogh described as "buttery yellow". Van Gogh was one of the first artists to use commercially manufactured paints, rather than paints he made himself. He used the traditional yellow ochre, but also chrome yellow, first made in 1809; and cadmium yellow, first made in 1820. In 1895 a new popular art form began to appear in New York newspapers; the color
comic strip A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics terminology#Captio ...
. It took advantage of a new color printing process, which used color separation and three different colors of ink; magenta, cyan, and yellow, plus black, to create all the colors on the page. One of the first characters in the new comic strips was a humorous boy of the New York streets named Mickey Dugen, more commonly known as the Yellow Kid, from the yellow nightshirt he wore. He gave his name (and color) to the whole genre of popular, sensational journalism, which became known as " yellow journalism". File:Fragonard, The Reader.jpg, '' A Young Girl Reading'', or ''The Reader''.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard Jean-Honoré Fragonard (; 5 April 1732 (birth/baptism certificate) – 22 August 1806) was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific art ...
, c. 1776, 32" × 25 1/2" National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. File:Turner - Rain, Steam and Speed - National Gallery file.jpg, '' Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway''. (1844). British painter J. M. W. Turner used yellow clouds to create a mood, the way romantic composers of the time used music. File:A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat, 1884.png, Georges Seurat used a new pigment, zinc yellow, in the green lawns of '' A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte'' (1884–86). He did not know that the paint would quickly deteriorate and turn brown. File:Vincent Van Gogh 0010.jpg, '' Sunflowers'' (1888) by
Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2,100 artworks ...
is a fountain of yellows. File:YellowKid.jpeg, The Yellow Kid (1895) was one of the first
comic strip A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics terminology#Captio ...
characters. He gave his name to type of sensational reporting called Yellow Journalism. File:Domenico Failutti - Retrato de Dona Leopoldina de Habsburgo e Seus Filhos, Acervo do Museu Paulista da USP.jpg, Empress Maria Leopoldina of Brazil with her children. File:Michael Ancher - Ung Pige - 1904.png, ''Young woman'' (Marie, from Skagen, Denmark) by Michael Ancher


20th and 21st centuries

In the 20th century, yellow was revived as a symbol of exclusion, as it had been in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Jews in
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
and German-occupied countries were required to sew yellow triangles with the star of David onto their clothing. In the 20th century, modernist painters reduced painting to its simplest colors and geometric shapes. The Dutch modernist painter
Piet Mondrian Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944), known after 1911 as Piet Mondrian (, , ), was a Dutch Painting, painter and Theory of art, art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He w ...
made a series of paintings which consisted of a pure white canvas with a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and rectangles of yellow, red, and blue. Yellow was particularly valued in the 20th century because of its high visibility. Because of its ability to be seen well from greater distances and at high speeds, yellow makes for the ideal color to be viewed from moving automobiles. It often replaced red as the color of fire trucks and other emergency vehicles, and was popular in neon signs, especially in Las Vegas and in China, where yellow was the most esteemed color. In the 1960s, Pickett Brand developed the "Eye Saver Yellow" slide rule, which was produced with a specific yellow color (Angstrom 5600) that reflects long-wavelength rays and promotes optimum eye-ease to help prevent eyestrain and improve visual accuracy. The 21st century saw the use of unusual materials and technologies to create new ways of experiencing the color yellow. One example was ''The weather project'', by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, which was installed in the open space of the Turbine Hall of London's Tate Modern in 2003. Eliasson used humidifiers to create a fine mist in the air via a mixture of sugar and water, as well as a semi-circular disc made up of hundreds of monochromatic lamps which radiated yellow light. The ceiling of the hall was covered with a huge mirror, in which visitors could see themselves as tiny black shadows against a mass of light.Cynthia Zarin (13 November 2006)
Seeing Things. The art of Olafur Eliasson
''New Yorker''.
File:Yellow Room, Frieseke.jpg, Yellow Room, Frederick Carl Frieseke, 1910 File:Yellowstar.jpg, Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe were required to wear yellow badges such as this. File:Horse&rider.jpg, Yellow was valued for its high visibility. Las Vegas became a showcase of neon art and advertising. File:Palácio do Planalto Campanha Internacional Maio Amarelo.jpg, The Palácio do Planalto, official workplace of the President of Brazil, illuminated in yellow light.


Fruits, vegetables, and eggs

Many fruits are yellow when ripe, such as lemons and bananas, their color derived from carotenoid pigments.
Egg yolk Among animals which produce eggs, the yolk (; also known as the vitellus) is the nutrient-bearing portion of the egg whose primary function is to supply food for the development of the embryo. Some types of egg contain no yolk, for example bec ...
s gain their color from xanthophylls, also a type of carotenoid pigment.


Flowers

Yellow is a common color of flowers. File:Mimosa Colombe d'Or Saint Paul de Vence.JPG, '' Acacia dealbata'' (silver wattle) File:Cassia bicapsularis (1).jpg, '' Senna bicapsularis'' (rambling senna) File:Narcissus pseudonarcissus flower 300303.jpg, Narcissus pseudonarcissus, or Daffodil File:金英花 Galphimia glauca - panoramio (1).jpg, '' Galphimia glauca''
(rain of gold) File:Anthyllis vulneraria, AlpenWundklee 1.JPG, '' Anthyllis vulneraria'' (common kidneyvetch) File:Yellow Marigold Tennessee.jpg, '' Tagetes erecta'' (Mexican marigold) File:Senecio angulatus.jpg, '' Senecio angulatus'' (creeping groundsel) File:Brugmansia aurea 12.jpg, '' Brugmansia aurea'' (angel's trumpet)


Other plants

* Rapeseed (Brassica napus), also known as rape or oilseed rape, is a bright yellow flowering member of the family ''Brassicaceae'' (mustard or cabbage family). * Goldenrod is a yellow flowering plant in the family ''
Asteraceae Asteraceae () is a large family (biology), family of flowering plants that consists of over 32,000 known species in over 1,900 genera within the Order (biology), order Asterales. The number of species in Asteraceae is rivaled only by the Orchi ...
''.


Minerals and chemistry

* Yellowcake (also known as urania and uranic oxide) is concentrated uranium oxide, obtained through the milling of uranium ore. Yellowcake is used in the preparation of fuel for
nuclear reactor A nuclear reactor is a device used to initiate and control a Nuclear fission, fission nuclear chain reaction. They are used for Nuclear power, commercial electricity, nuclear marine propulsion, marine propulsion, Weapons-grade plutonium, weapons ...
s and in uranium enrichment, one of the essential steps for creating
nuclear weapon A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear exp ...
s. * Titan yellow (also known as clayton yellow), chemical formula has been used to determine
magnesium Magnesium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Mg and atomic number 12. It is a shiny gray metal having a low density, low melting point and high chemical reactivity. Like the other alkaline earth metals (group 2 ...
in serum and
urine Urine is a liquid by-product of metabolism in humans and many other animals. In placental mammals, urine flows from the Kidney (vertebrates), kidneys through the ureters to the urinary bladder and exits the urethra through the penile meatus (mal ...
, but the method is prone to interference, making the ammonium phosphate method superior when analysing blood cells, food or fecal material. * Methyl yellow (''p''-dimethylaminoazobenzene) is a
pH indicator A pH indicator is a halochromism, halochromic chemical compound added in small amounts to a Solution (chemistry), solution so the pH (acidity or Base (chemistry), basicity) of the solution can be determined visually or spectroscopically by chang ...
used to determine acidity. It changes from yellow at pH 4.0 to red at pH 2.9. * Yellow
fireworks Fireworks are Explosive, low explosive Pyrotechnics, pyrotechnic devices used for aesthetic and entertainment purposes. They are most commonly used in fireworks displays (also called a fireworks show or pyrotechnics), combining a large numbe ...
are produced by adding
sodium Sodium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Na (from Neo-Latin ) and atomic number 11. It is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal. Sodium is an alkali metal, being in group 1 element, group 1 of the peri ...
compounds to the firework mixture. Sodium has a strong emission at 589.3 nm ( D-line), a very slightly orange-tinted yellow. * Amongst the elements,
sulfur Sulfur ( American spelling and the preferred IUPAC name) or sulphur ( Commonwealth spelling) is a chemical element; it has symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms ...
and gold are most obviously yellow.
Phosphorus Phosphorus is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol P and atomic number 15. All elemental forms of phosphorus are highly Reactivity (chemistry), reactive and are therefore never found in nature. They can nevertheless be prepared ar ...
, arsenic and antimony have allotropes which are yellow or whitish-yellow;
fluorine Fluorine is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol F and atomic number 9. It is the lightest halogen and exists at Standard temperature and pressure, standard conditions as pale yellow Diatomic molecule, diatomic gas. Fluorine is extre ...
and
chlorine Chlorine is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table and its properties are mostly intermediate between ...
are pale yellowish gases. * Many crystalline chemical compounds, such as 2,4-Dinitrophenol, are yellowish in color.


Pigments

* Yellow ochre (also known as Mars yellow, Pigment yellow 42, 43), hydrated ferric oxide (), is a naturally occurring
pigment A pigment is a powder used to add or alter color or change visual appearance. Pigments are completely or nearly solubility, insoluble and reactivity (chemistry), chemically unreactive in water or another medium; in contrast, dyes are colored sub ...
found in clays in many parts of the world. It is non-toxic and has been used in painting since prehistoric times. * Indian yellow is a transparent, fluorescent pigment used in oil paintings and watercolors. Originally magnesium euxanthate, it was claimed to have been produced from the urine of Indian cows fed only on mango leaves. It has now been replaced by synthetic Indian yellow hue. * Naples Yellow (lead antimonate yellow) is one of the oldest synthetic pigments, derived from the mineral bindheimite and used extensively up to the 20th century. It is toxic and nowadays is replaced in paint by a mixture of modern pigments. * Cadmium Yellow ( cadmium sulfide, CdS) has been used in artists' paints since the mid-19th century. Because of its toxicity, it may nowadays be replaced by azo pigments. * Chrome yellow (lead chromate, ), derived from the mineral crocoite, was used by artists in the earlier part of the 19th century, but has been largely replaced by other yellow pigments because of the toxicity of lead. * Zinc yellow or zinc chromate is a synthetic pigment made in the 19th century, and used by the painter Georges Seurat in his pointillist paintings. He did not know that it was highly unstable, and would quickly turn brown. * Titanium yellow (nickel antimony titanium yellow rutile, ) is created by adding small amounts of the oxides of nickel and antimony to titanium dioxide and heating. It is used to produce yellow paints with good white coverage and has the LBNL paint code "Y10". * Gamboge is an orange-brown
resin A resin is a solid or highly viscous liquid that can be converted into a polymer. Resins may be biological or synthetic in origin, but are typically harvested from plants. Resins are mixtures of organic compounds, predominantly terpenes. Commo ...
, derived from trees of the genus Garcinia, which becomes yellow when powdered. It was used as a watercolor pigment in the far east from the 8th century – the name "gamboge" is derived from "
Cambodia Cambodia, officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. It is bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the north, and Vietnam to the east, and has a coastline ...
" – and has been used in Europe since the 17th century. * Orpiment, also called King's Yellow or Chinese Yellow is arsenic trisulfide () and was used as a paint pigment until the 19th century when, because of its high toxicity and reaction with lead-based pigments, it was generally replaced by Cadmium Yellow. * Azo dye-based pigment (a brightly colored transparent or semitransparent dye with a white pigment) is used as the colorant in most modern paints requiring either a highly saturated yellow or simplicity of color mixing. The most common is the monoazo arylide yellow family, first marketed as Hansa Yellow.


Dyes

* Curcuma longa, also known as turmeric, is a plant grown in India and Southeast Asia which serves as a dye for clothing, especially monks' robes; as a spice for curry and other dishes; and as a popular medicine. It is also used as a food coloring for mustard and other products. * Saffron, like turmeric, is one of the rare dyes that is also a spice and food colorant. It is made from the dried red stigma of the crocus sativus flower. It must be picked by hand and it takes 150 flowers to obtain a single gram of stigma, so it is extremely expensive. It probably originated in the Mediterranean or Southwest Asia, and its use was detailed in a 7th-century BC Assyrian botanical reference compiled under Ashurbanipal. It was known in India at the time of the Buddha, and after his death his followers decreed that monks should wear robes the color of saffron. Saffron was used to dye the robes of the senior Buddhist monks, while ordinary monks wore robes dyed with Gamboge or Curcuma longa, also known as Turmeric. The color of saffron comes from crocin, a red variety of carotenoid natural pigment. The color of the dyed fabric varies from deep red to orange to yellow, depending upon the type of saffron and the process. Most saffron today comes from Iran, but it is also grown commercially in Spain, Italy and Kashmir in India, and as a boutique crop in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland and other countries. In the United States, it has been cultivated by the Pennsylvania Dutch community since the early 18th century. Because of the high price of saffron, other similar dyes and spices are often sold under the name saffron; for instance, what is called ''Indian saffron'' is often really turmeric. * Reseda luteola, also known as dyers weed, yellow weed or weld, has been used as a yellow dye from neolithic times. It grew wild along the roads and walls of Europe, and was introduced into North America, where it grows as a weed. It was used as both as a yellow dye, whose color was deep and lasting, and to dye fabric green, first by dyeing it blue with indigo, then dyeing it with reseda luteola to turn it a rich, solid and lasting green. It was the most common yellow dye in Europe from the Middle Ages until the 18th century, when it was replaced first by the bark of the quercitron tree from North America, then by synthetic dyes. It was also widely used in North Africa and in the Ottoman Empire. * Gamboge is a deep saffron to mustard yellow pigment and dye. In Asia, it is frequently used to dye Buddhist monks' robes. Gamboge is most often extracted by tapping
resin A resin is a solid or highly viscous liquid that can be converted into a polymer. Resins may be biological or synthetic in origin, but are typically harvested from plants. Resins are mixtures of organic compounds, predominantly terpenes. Commo ...
from various species of evergreen trees of the family '' Guttiferae'', which grow in Cambodia, Thailand, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. "Kambuj" (
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
: कंबुज) is the ancient
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
name for
Cambodia Cambodia, officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. It is bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the north, and Vietnam to the east, and has a coastline ...
. File:Orpiment mineral.jpg, Orpiment was a source of yellow pigment from ancient Egypt through the 19th century, though it is highly toxic. File:Indisch-Gelb.jpg, Indian yellow pigment File:Lead chromate.JPG, Chrome yellow was discovered in 1809. File:Saffran crocus sativus moist.jpg, The dye and spice saffron comes from the dried red stigma of this plant, the crocus sativus. File:Curcuma longa roots.jpg, Curcuma longa, also known as Turmeric, has been used for centuries in India as a dye, particularly for monk's robes. it is also commonly used as a medicine and as a spice in Indian cooking. File:Reseda luteola (Flowers).jpg, Reseda luteola, also known as dyers weed, yellow weed or weld, was the most popular source of yellow dye in Europe from the Middle Ages through the 18th century. File:Garcinia subelliptica (200703).jpg, The Garcinia tree of Southeast Asia, whose resin is used to make the yellow dye called gamboge.


Food coloring

The most common yellow food coloring in use today is called Tartrazine. It is a synthetic lemon yellow azo dye. It is also known as
E number E numbers, short for Europe numbers, are codes for substances used as food additives, including those found naturally in many foods, such as vitamin C, for use within the European Union (EU) and European Free Trade Association (EFTA). Commonly ...
E102, C.I. 19140, FD&C yellow 5, acid yellow 23, food yellow 4, and trisodium 1-(4-sulfonatophenyl)-4-(4-sulfonatophenylazo)-5-pyrazolone-3-carboxylate. It is the yellow most frequently used such processed food products as corn and potato chips, breakfast cereals such as corn flakes, candies, popcorn, mustard, jams and jellies, gelatin, soft drinks (notably Mountain Dew), energy and sports drinks, and pastries. It is also widely used in liquid and bar soap, shampoo, cosmetics and medicines. Sometimes it is mixed with blue dyes to color processed products green. It is typically labelled on food packages as "color", "tartrazine", or "E102". In the United States, because of concerns about possible health problems related to intolerance to tartrazine, its presence must be declared on food and drug product labels. Another popular synthetic yellow coloring is Sunset Yellow FCF (also known as ''orange yellow S'', ''FD&C yellow 6'' and ''C.I. 15985'') It is manufactured from aromatic hydrocarbons from petroleum. When added to foods sold in Europe, it is denoted by E number E110.


Symbolism and associations

In the west, yellow is not a well-loved color. In a year 2000 survey, only 6% of respondents in Europe and America named it as their favorite color, compared with 45% for blue, 15% for green, 12% for red, and 10% for black. For 7% of respondents, it was their least favorite color.Eva Heller (2000), ''Psychologie de la couleur – effets et symboliques'', p. 33. Yellow is considered a color of ambivalence and contradiction. It is associated with optimism and amusement, but also with betrayal, duplicity, and jealousy. However, in China and other parts of Asia, yellow is a color of virtue and nobility.


In China

Yellow has strong historical and cultural associations in China, where ''huáng'' ( or ) is the color of happiness, glory, and wisdom. Although ''huáng'' originally and occasionally still covers a range inclusive of tans and oranges, speakers of modern
Standard Mandarin Standard Chinese ( zh, s=现代标准汉语, t=現代標準漢語, p=Xiàndài biāozhǔn hànyǔ, l=modern standard Han speech) is a modern Standard language, standard form of Mandarin Chinese that was first codified during the Republic of ...
tend to map their use of ''huáng'' to shades corresponding to English yellow. In Chinese symbolism, yellow, red, and green are masculine colors, while black and white are considered feminine. After the development of the theory of five elements, the Chinese reckoned various correspondences. On a five season model, late summer was characterized by yellowing leaves. Yellow was taken as the color of the fifth direction of the compass, the central. China is called the Middle Kingdom; the palace of the Emperor was considered to be in the exact center of the world.Eva Heller (2000), ''Psychologie de la couleur – effets et symboliques'', p. 82. The legendary first emperor of China was called the Yellow Emperor and the last, Puyi (1906–67), described in his memoirs how every object which surrounded him as a child was yellow. "It made me understand from my most tender age that I was of a unique essence, and it instilled in me the consciousness of my 'celestial nature' which made me different from every other human." The Chinese Emperor was literally considered the child of heaven, with both a political and religious role, both symbolized by yellow. After the
Song dynasty The Song dynasty ( ) was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 960 to 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song, who usurped the throne of the Later Zhou dynasty and went on to conquer the rest of the Fiv ...
, laws banned the use of certain bright yellow shades by anyone but the emperor. Distinguished visitors were honored with a yellow, not a red, carpet. In current Chinese pop culture, the term "yellow movie" () refers to films and other cultural items of a pornographic nature, analogous to the English " blue movie". This was the basis of the 2007 " very erotic very violent" meme, with the word "erotic" calquing Chinese "yellow". File:Yellow River - panoramio.jpg , The
Yellow River The Yellow River, also known as Huanghe, is the second-longest river in China and the List of rivers by length, sixth-longest river system on Earth, with an estimated length of and a Drainage basin, watershed of . Beginning in the Bayan H ...
at Sanmenxia File:Portrait assis de l'empereur Jiajing.jpg, Portrait of the
Jiajing Emperor The Jiajing Emperor (16September 150723January 1567), also known by his temple name as the Emperor Shizong of Ming, personal name Zhu Houcong, art name, art names Yaozhai, Leixuan, and Tianchi Diaosou, was the 12th List of emperors of the Ming ...
from the
Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of ...
. File:乾隆皇帝老年肖像.jpg, The Qianlong Emperor in court dress (18th century). File:Imperial Yellow Peking Glass Vase Closeup.jpg, Daoguang period Peking glass vase, a shade called "Imperial Yellow" after the Qing banner File:20090528 Beijing Forbidden City 8074.jpg, Yellow roofs in the
Forbidden City The Forbidden City () is the Chinese Empire, imperial Chinese palace, palace complex in the center of the Imperial City, Beijing, Imperial City in Beijing, China. It was the residence of 24 Ming dynasty, Ming and Qing dynasty, Qing dynasty L ...
File:Shanghainanjingroadpic1.jpg, Neon lights in modern Shanghai with a predominance of red and yellow.


Light and reason

Yellow, as the color of sunlight when sun is near the horizon, is commonly associated with warmth. Yellow combined with red symbolized heat and energy. A room painted yellow feels warmer than a room painted white, and a lamp with yellow light seems more natural than a lamp with white light. As the color of light, yellow is also associated with knowledge and wisdom. In English and many other languages, "brilliant" and "bright" mean intelligent. In
Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...
, the yellow color of gold symbolizes wisdom. In medieval European symbolism, red symbolized passion, blue symbolized the spiritual, and yellow symbolized reason. In many European universities, yellow gowns and caps are worn by members of the faculty of physical and natural sciences, as yellow is the color of reason and research.


Gold and blond

In ancient Greece and Rome, the gods were often depicted with yellow, or blonde hair, which was described in literature as 'golden'. The color yellow was associated with the sun gods Helios and
Apollo Apollo is one of the Twelve Olympians, Olympian deities in Ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek and Ancient Roman religion, Roman religion and Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, mu ...
. It was fashionable in ancient Greece for men and women to dye their hair yellow, or to spend time in the sun to bleach it.Eva Heller (2000), ''Psychologie de la couleur – effets et symboliques'', p. 73. In ancient Rome, prostitutes were required to bleach their hair, to be easily identified, but it also became a fashionable hair color for aristocratic women, influenced by the exotic blonde hair of many of the newly conquered slaves from Gaul, Britain, and Germany. However, in medieval Europe and later, the word yellow often had negative connotations; associated with betrayal, so yellow hair was more poetically called 'blond,' 'light', 'fair,' or most often "golden".


Visibility and caution

Yellow is the most visible color from a distance, so it is often used for objects that need to be seen, such as fire engines, road maintenance equipment, school buses and taxicabs. It is also often used for warning signs, since yellow traditionally signals caution, rather than danger. Safety yellow is often used for safety and accident prevention information. A yellow light on a traffic signal means slow down, but not stop. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) uses Pantone 116 (a yellow hue) as their standard color implying "general warning", while the Federal Highway Administration similarly uses yellow to communicate warning or caution on highway signage. A yellow penalty card in a soccer match means warning, but not expulsion. File:Thomas SafTLiner C2 RF.jpg, In North America, school buses such as this one in Albemarle County, Virginia are required to be painted yellow. File:Gelber Briefkasten der Deutschen Post.JPG, A mailbox in Germany. Yellow was the color of the early postal service in the Habsburg Empire. File:Crashtender BC.jpg, A crash tender of the Royal Danish Air Force. File:Sea King HAR3 XZ585 at RIAT 2010 arp.jpg, An RAF Sea King rescue helicopter. File:Massimo Busacca, Referee, Switzerland (10).jpg, Yellow penalty card used during an association football match


Optimism and pleasure

Yellow is the color most associated with optimism and pleasure; it is a color designed to attract attention, and is used for amusement. Yellow dresses in fashion are rare, but always associated with gaiety and celebration. File:L'impératrice Eugénie à la Marie-Antoinette, 1854, Franz Xaver Winterhalter.jpg, The Empress Eugenie dressed as Marie Antoinette, painted by Franz Winterhalter (1854) File:Kuznetsova by Repin.jpg, ''Portrait of Madame Kuznetsova'', by Ilya Repin. (1901) File:James Tissot - The Ball.jpg, ''The Ball'' by
James Tissot Jacques Joseph Tissot (; 15 October 1836 – 8 August 1902), better known as James Tissot ( , ), was a French painter, illustrator, and caricaturist. He was born to a drapery merchant and a milliner and decided to pursue a career in art at a y ...
(1880) File:Basil Soda Yellow Dress - Paris Haute Couture Spring-Summer 2012.jpg, Yellow Dress – Paris Haute Couture Spring-Summer File:Flickr - dalbera - Danseuses de Kuchipudi (musée Guimet).jpg, Kuchipudi dancers File:Kylie Minogue IMG 4379.JPG, Singer
Kylie Minogue Kylie Ann Minogue (; born 28 May 1968) is an Australian singer, songwriter, and actress. Frequently referred to as the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Princess of Pop", she has achieved recognition in both the music industry and fas ...
performs at a Nobel Prize Concert


Mayan and Italian

The ancient Maya associated the color yellow with the direction South. The Maya glyph for "yellow" (k'an) also means "precious" or "ripe". " Giallo", in Italian, refers to crime stories, both fictional and real. This association began in about 1930, when the first series of crime novels published in Italy had yellow covers.


Music

*
The Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The core lineup of the band comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are widely regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatle ...
1966 album ''
Revolver A revolver is a repeating handgun with at least one barrel and a revolving cylinder containing multiple chambers (each holding a single cartridge) for firing. Because most revolver models hold six cartridges before needing to be reloaded, ...
'' features the No. 1 hit, " Yellow Submarine". Subsequently, United Artists released an animated film in 1968 called '' Yellow Submarine'', based on the music of the Beatles. * The March 1967 album by Donovan called '' Mellow Yellow'' reached number 2 on the U.S. ''Billboard'' charts in 1966 and number 8 in the UK in early 1967. The song of the same name popularized a widely-held belief that it was possible to get high by smoking scrapings from the inside of banana peels. This rumor was actually started in 1966 by Country Joe McDonald. *
Coldplay Coldplay are a British Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1997. They consist of vocalist and pianist Chris Martin, guitarist Jonny Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman, drummer and percussionist Will Champion, and manager Phil Harvey (band m ...
achieved worldwide fame with their 2000 single " Yellow". * "
Yellow River The Yellow River, also known as Huanghe, is the second-longest river in China and the List of rivers by length, sixth-longest river system on Earth, with an estimated length of and a Drainage basin, watershed of . Beginning in the Bayan H ...
" is a song recorded by the British band Christie in 1970. * The '' Yellow River Piano Concerto'' is a piano concerto arranged by a collaboration between musicians including Yin Chengzong and Chu Wanghua. Its premiere was in 1969 during the
Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a Social movement, sociopolitical movement in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his de ...
.


Politics

* Yellow as a political color is most commonly associated with
liberalism Liberalism is a Political philosophy, political and moral philosophy based on the Individual rights, rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, the right to private property, and equality before the law. ...
,
libertarianism Libertarianism (from ; or from ) is a political philosophy that holds freedom, personal sovereignty, and liberty as primary values. Many libertarians believe that the concept of freedom is in accord with the Non-Aggression Principle, according t ...
and anarcho-capitalism. Contemporary political parties using yellow include the Liberal Democrats and
UKIP The UK Independence Party (UKIP, ) is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), member ...
in the United Kingdom, the SNP in Scotland, ACT in New Zealand, and Libertarian Party in the United States. * In the United States, a yellow dog Democrat was a Southern voter who consistently voted for Democratic candidates in the late 19th and early 20th centuries because of lingering resentment against the Republicans dating back to the
Civil War A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...
and Reconstruction period. Today the term refers to a hard-core Democrat, supposedly referring to a person who would vote for a "yellow dog" before voting for a Republican. * In China the Yellow Turbans were a Daoist sect that staged an extensive
rebellion Rebellion is an uprising that resists and is organized against one's government. A rebel is a person who engages in a rebellion. A rebel group is a consciously coordinated group that seeks to gain political control over an entire state or a ...
during the
Han dynasty The Han dynasty was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC9 AD, 25–220 AD) established by Liu Bang and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–206 BC ...
. * The 1986 People Power Revolution in the
Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...
was also known as the Yellow Revolution due to the presence of yellow ribbons during the demonstrations. Liberal and pro-democracy political parties and organizations such as
UNIDO The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) (French: Organisation des Nations unies pour le développement industriel; French/Spanish acronym: ONUDI) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that assists countries in ...
, PDP-Laban, and the
Liberal Party The Liberal Party is any of many political parties around the world. The meaning of ''liberal'' varies around the world, ranging from liberal conservatism on the right to social liberalism on the left. For example, while the political systems ...
have used the color yellow. More recently, it has become a pejorative term used by some pro-Ferdinand Marcos and pro-Rodrigo Duterte against the opposition. * In France in November and December 2018, an opposition movement called the Yellow Vests went into the streets to protest against the fiscal policies of President
Emmanuel Macron Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron (; born 21 December 1977) is a French politician who has served as President of France and Co-Prince of Andorra since 2017. He was Ministry of Economy and Finance (France), Minister of Economics, Industr ...
. They wore yellow safety vests, which French motorists are required by law to have in their cars.


Selected national and international flags

Three of the five most populous countries in the world (China and Brazil) have yellow or gold in their flag, representing about half of the world's population. While many flags use yellow, their symbolism varies widely, from civic virtue to golden treasure, golden fields, the desert, royalty, the keys to Heaven and the leadership of the Communist Party. In classic European
heraldry Heraldry is a discipline relating to the design, display and study of armorial bearings (known as armory), as well as related disciplines, such as vexillology, together with the study of ceremony, Imperial, royal and noble ranks, rank and genealo ...
, yellow, along with white, is one of the two metals (called gold and silver) and therefore flags following heraldic design rules must use either yellow or white to separate any of their other colors (see the rule of tincture and
insignia An insignia () is a sign or mark distinguishing a group, grade, rank, or function. It can be a symbol of personal power or that of an official group or governing body. An insignia, which is typically made of metal or fabric, is a standalone sy ...
). File:Flag of Belgium.svg, Flag of Belgium (1831). The yellow comes from the yellow lion in the coat of arms of the
Duchy of Brabant The Duchy of Brabant, a Imperial State, state of the Holy Roman Empire, was established in 1183. It developed from the Landgraviate of Brabant of 1085–1183, and formed the heart of the historic Low Countries. The Duchy comprised part of the Bu ...
, founded in 1183–84. File:Flag of Bhutan.svg,
Flag of Bhutan The national flag of Bhutan (Dzongkha: ) is one of the national symbols of Bhutan. The flag features the Druk, a dragon from Bhutanese mythology. This alludes to the country's name in , meaning 'The Thunder Dragon Kingdom', as well as the Druk ...
(1956). The Bhutan flag features Druk, the thunder dragon of Bhutanese mythology. The yellow represents civic tradition, the red the Buddhist spiritual tradition. File:Flag of Brazil.svg, Flag of Brazil (1889). The yellow color was inherited from the flag of the
Empire of Brazil The Empire of Brazil was a 19th-century state that broadly comprised the territories which form modern Brazil and Uruguay until the latter achieved independence in 1828. The empire's government was a Representative democracy, representative Par ...
(1822–1889), where it represented the color of the House of Habsburg. File:Flag of Brunei.svg, Flag of Brunei (1956). In Southeast Asia yellow is the color of royalty. it is the color of the Sultan of Brunei, and also appears on the flag of Thailand and of Malaysia. File:Flag of Chad.svg, Flag of Chad (1959). The color yellow here represents the sun and the desert in the north of the country. This flag is identical to that of Romania, except that it uses a slightly darker indigo blue rather than cobalt blue. File:Flag of the People's Republic of China.svg, Flag of the People's Republic of China (1949). The four small gold stars represent the workers, peasants, urban middle class, and rural middle class. The large star represents the
Chinese Communist Party The Communist Party of China (CPC), also translated into English as Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP emerged victorious in the ...
. File:Flag of Colombia.svg, Flag of Colombia. The asymmetric design of the flag is based on the old Flag of Gran Colombia. The yellow color represents the golden treasure taken from Colombia over the centuries. File:Flag of Germany.svg, Flag of Germany. Black, red and yellow were the colors of the
Holy Roman Emperor The Holy Roman Emperor, originally and officially the Emperor of the Romans (disambiguation), Emperor of the Romans (; ) during the Middle Ages, and also known as the Roman-German Emperor since the early modern period (; ), was the ruler and h ...
, and, in 1919, of the German
Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic, officially known as the German Reich, was the German Reich, German state from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional republic for the first time in history; hence it is also referred to, and unofficially proclai ...
. The modern German flag was adopted in 1949. File:Flag of Jamaica.svg, Flag of Jamaica (1962). It is currently the only national flag that does not contain a shade of the colors red, white, or blue. File:Flag of Lithuania.svg, Flag of Lithuania (1918 to 1940, restored in 1989, modified in 2004). Yellow represents the sun, light and goodness. File:Flag of Malaysia.svg, Flag of Malaysia (original version, 1950, current version 1963.) The yellow crescent represents Islam, the yellow star the unity of the fourteen states of Malaysia. The red and white stripes (like the stripes on the U.S. flag) are adopted from the flag of the
British East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...
. File:Flag of Mozambique.svg, Flag of Mozambique (1983). The colors are those of the Marxist Liberation Front of Mozambique, or FRELIMO, which rules the country. Yellow represents the country's mineral wealth. File:Flag of the Philippines.svg,
Flag of the Philippines The national flag of the Philippines () is a horizontal List of flags by design#Bicolour, bicolor flag with equal bands of royal blue and Crimson, crimson red, with a white, equilateral chevron at the Glossary of vexillology#Flag elements, hois ...
(1898). The yellow sun is in the middle of the triangle shape. File:Flag of Romania.svg, Flag of Romania (1848, and again in 1989, after the fall of the Communist regime.) Blue, yellow and red were the colors of the Wallachian uprising of 1821, and the 1848 revolution. Yellow represents justice. File:Flag of Spain.svg, Flag of Spain (1978). The yellow in the Spanish flag comes from the traditional Crown of Castille and the
Crown of Aragon The Crown of Aragon (, ) ;, ; ; . was a composite monarchy ruled by one king, originated by the dynastic union of the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona (later Principality of Catalonia) and ended as a consequence of the War of the Sp ...
. The general design was adopted in 1785 for the Spanish Navy, to be visible from a great distance at sea. File:Flag of Sweden.svg, Flag of Sweden (adopted 1906, but colors in use since at least the mid-16th century). The legend says that in 1157, during the First Swedish Crusade, the Swedish king Eric the Holy saw a golden cross appear in the blue sky. File:Flag of Ukraine.svg, Flag of Ukraine (1992 (originally in 1918)). File:Flag of the Vatican City.svg, Flag of Vatican City (1929). The yellow color represents the golden key of the Kingdom of heaven, described in the Book of Matthew of the
New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...
, and part of the Papal seal on the flag. File:Flag of Vietnam.svg, Flag of Vietnam (1955). The big gold star represents five main classes (laborers, soldiers, peasants, intellectuals and bourgeois).


Defunct flags

File:Heiliges Römisches Reich - Reichssturmfahne vor 1433.svg, The banner of the Holy Roman Empire (15th century). The black, yellow and red colors reappeared first in 1848 and then in the 20th century in the German flag. File:Flag of the Gran Colombia (1819-1820).svg, (1819) The flag of Gran Colombia, which won independence from Spain, then broke into three countries (
Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...
,
Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...
and
Ecuador Ecuador, officially the Republic of Ecuador, is a country in northwestern South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. It also includes the Galápagos Province which contain ...
) in 1830. File:Flag of the Qing Dynasty (1889-1912).svg, Imperial flag of the
Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...
, China (1890–1912), the last dynasty of China, overthrown by the Xinhai Revolution of 1911. File:Flag of South Vietnam.svg, Flag of
South Vietnam South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam (RVN; , VNCH), was a country in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975. It first garnered Diplomatic recognition, international recognition in 1949 as the State of Vietnam within the ...
(1955–75). This was the flag of the anti-communist southern part of Vietnam during the
Vietnam War The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...
. It was replaced by the flag of North Vietnam after communist forces took
Saigon Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) ('','' TP.HCM; ), commonly known as Saigon (; ), is the most populous city in Vietnam with a population of around 14 million in 2025. The city's geography is defined by rivers and canals, of which the largest is Saigo ...
on 30 April 1975. File:Flag of East Germany.svg, The flag of
East Germany East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...
(1959–90). It differs from the West German flag by the presence of a communist symbol in the center, and it fell out of use when Germany was reunified after the fall of the Berlin Wall.


Religion

* In
Buddhism Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...
, the saffron colors of robes to be worn by monks were defined by the Buddha himself and his followers in the 5th century BCE. The robe and its color is a sign of renunciation of the outside world and commitment to the order. The candidate monk, with his master, first appears before the monks of the monastery in his own clothes, with his new robe under his arm, and asks to enter the order. He then takes his vows, puts on the robes, and with his begging bowl, goes out to the world. Thereafter, he spends his mornings begging and his afternoons in contemplation and study, either in a forest, garden, or in the monastery.Henri Arvon (1951). ''Le bouddhisme'', pp. 61–64. According to Buddhist scriptures and commentaries, the robe dye is allowed to be obtained from six kinds of substances: roots and tubers, plants, bark, leaves, flowers and fruits. The robes should also be boiled in water a long time to get the correctly sober color. Saffron and ochre, usually made with dye from the curcuma longa plant or the heartwood of the
jackfruit The jackfruit or ''nangka'' (''Artocarpus heterophyllus'') is a species of tree in the Common fig, fig, mulberry, and breadfruit family (Moraceae). The jackfruit is the largest tree fruit, reaching as much as in weight, in length, and in d ...
tree, are the most common colors. The so-called forest monks usually wear ochre robes and city monks saffron, though this is not an official rule. The color of robes also varies somewhat among the different "vehicles", or schools of Buddhism, and by country, depending on their doctrines and the dyes available. The monks of the strict
Vajrayana ''Vajrayāna'' (; 'vajra vehicle'), also known as Mantrayāna ('mantra vehicle'), Guhyamantrayāna ('secret mantra vehicle'), Tantrayāna ('tantra vehicle'), Tantric Buddhism, and Esoteric Buddhism, is a Mahāyāna Buddhism, Mahāyāna Buddhis ...
, or Tantric Buddhism, practiced in
Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ), or Greater Tibet, is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups s ...
, wear the most colorful robes of saffron and red. The monks of Mahayana Buddhism, practiced mainly in Japan, China and Korea, wear lighter yellow or saffron, often with white or black. Monks of Hinayana Buddhism, practiced in Southeast Asia, usually wear ochre or saffron color. Monks of the forest tradition in Thailand and other parts of Southeast Asia wear robes of a brownish ochre, dyed from the wood of the
jackfruit The jackfruit or ''nangka'' (''Artocarpus heterophyllus'') is a species of tree in the Common fig, fig, mulberry, and breadfruit family (Moraceae). The jackfruit is the largest tree fruit, reaching as much as in weight, in length, and in d ...
tree.Anne Varichon (2000), ''Couleurs- pigments et teintures dans les mains des peuples'', p. 62. * In
Hinduism Hinduism () is an Hypernymy and hyponymy, umbrella term for a range of Indian religions, Indian List of religions and spiritual traditions#Indian religions, religious and spiritual traditions (Sampradaya, ''sampradaya''s) that are unified ...
, the divinity Krishna is commonly portrayed dressed in yellow. Yellow and saffron are also the colors worn by sadhu, or wandering holy men in India. The Hindu almighty and divine god Lord Ganesha or Ganpati is mostly dressed with a dhotar in yellow, which is popularly known as pivla pitambar and is considered to be the most auspicious one. * In
Sikhism Sikhism is an Indian religion and Indian philosophy, philosophy that originated in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent around the end of the 15th century CE. It is one of the most recently founded major religious groups, major religio ...
: The Sikh Rehat Maryada clearly states that the Nishan Sahib hoisted outside every Gurudwara should be xanthic (Basanti in Punjabi) or greyish blue (modern day Navy blue) (Surmaaee in Punjabi) color. * In
Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...
, the yellow color of gold symbolizes wisdom. * In the religions of the islands of
Polynesia Polynesia ( , ) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are called Polynesians. They have many things in ...
, yellow is a sacred color, the color of the divine essence; the word "yellow" in the local languages is the same as the name of the curcuma longa plant, which is considered the food of the gods. * In
Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...
, especially the
Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
, yellow symbolizes gold, and in Christian mythology the golden key to the Kingdom of Heaven, which divine Christ gave to Saint Peter. The flag of the
Vatican City Vatican City, officially the Vatican City State (; ), is a Landlocked country, landlocked sovereign state and city-state; it is enclaved within Rome, the capital city of Italy and Bishop of Rome, seat of the Catholic Church. It became inde ...
and the colors of the pope are yellow and white, symbolizing the gold key and the silver key. White and yellow together can also symbolize Easter, rebirth and Resurrection. Yellow also has a negative meaning, symbolizing betrayal; Judas Iscariot is usually portrayed wearing a pale yellow toga. Yellow and golden halos mark the saints in religious paintings. *In
Wicca Wicca (), also known as "The Craft", is a Modern paganism, modern pagan, syncretic, Earth religion, Earth-centred religion. Considered a new religious movement by Religious studies, scholars of religion, the path evolved from Western esote ...
, yellow represents intellect, inspiration, imagination, and knowledge. It is used for communication, confidence, divination, and study. File:Rank celebration of Thai Buddhist monk 1.jpg, Buddhist monks at the promotion ceremony of a monk in Thailand File:Buddhist monks of Tibet7.jpg, Buddhist monks in
Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ), or Greater Tibet, is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups s ...
File:Ueno monk.jpg, A Japanese Buddhist monk in downtown Tokyo File:Sadou Kathmandu 04 04.jpg, A Hindu sadhu, or ascetic wandering monk or holy man, in
Kathmandu Kathmandu () is the capital and largest city of Nepal, situated in the central part of the country within the Kathmandu Valley. As per the 2021 Nepal census, it has a population of 845,767 residing in 105,649 households, with approximately 4 mi ...
, Nepal. File:Gesupietrochiave.jpg, Christ giving the golden key of the kingdom heaven to Saint Peter (1481–82), by Pietro Perugino. The golden key is the symbol of the Pope. File:Benedykt XVI (2010-10-17) 4.jpg,
Pope Benedict XVI Pope BenedictXVI (born Joseph Alois Ratzinger; 16 April 1927 – 31 December 2022) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 19 April 2005 until his resignation on 28 February 2013. Benedict's election as p ...
. The Pope traditionally wears gold and white outside St. Peter's Basilica. File:Nishan Sahib in blue, at Baba Phoola Singh di Burj in Amritsar.jpg,
Sikh Sikhs (singular Sikh: or ; , ) are an ethnoreligious group who adhere to Sikhism, a religion that originated in the late 15th century in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, based on the revelation of Guru Nanak. The term ''Si ...
Nishan Sahib in blue, at Akali Phoola Singh di Burj in Amritsar


New Age Spiritual Metaphysics

* In the
metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of ...
of the
New Age New Age is a range of Spirituality, spiritual or Religion, religious practices and beliefs that rapidly grew in Western world, Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclecticism, eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise d ...
author, Alice A. Bailey, in her system called the Seven Rays which classifies humans into seven different metaphysical psychological types, the ''fourth ray'' of ''harmony through conflict'' is represented by the color ''yellow''. People who have this metaphysical psychological type are said to be ''on the Yellow Ray''." * Yellow is used to symbolically represent the third, solar plexus chakra ( Manipura). * Psychics who claim to be able to observe the aura with their
third eye The third eye (also called the mind's eye or inner eye) is an invisible eye, usually depicted as located on the forehead, supposed to provide perception beyond ordinary sight. In Hinduism, the third eye refers to the ajna (or brow) chakra. In bot ...
report that someone with a yellow aura is typically someone who is in an occupation requiring intellectual acumen, such as a scientist.


Sports

* In Association football (soccer), the referee shows a yellow card to indicate that a player has been officially warned because they have committed a foul or have wasted time. * Originally in
Rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as rugby league in English-speaking countries and rugby 13/XIII in non-Anglophone Europe, is a contact sport, full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular Rugby league playin ...
and then later, also in
Rugby Union Rugby union football, commonly known simply as rugby union in English-speaking countries and rugby 15/XV in non-English-speaking world, Anglophone Europe, or often just rugby, is a Contact sport#Terminology, close-contact team sport that orig ...
, the referee shows a yellow card to indicate that a player has been sent to the sin bin. * In cycle racing, the yellow jersey – or ''maillot jaune'' – is awarded to the leader in some stage races. The tradition was begun in the Tour de France where the sponsoring ''L'Auto'' newspaper (later '' L'Équipe'') was printed on distinctive yellow
newsprint Newsprint is a low-cost, non-archival paper consisting mainly of wood pulp and most commonly used to print newspapers and other publications and advertising material. Invented in 1844 by Charles Fenerty of Nova Scotia, Canada, it usually has ...
. * National teams of
Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
,
Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...
and
Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...
usually play in yellow shirts.


Transportation

* In some countries, taxicabs are commonly yellow. This practice began in Chicago, where taxi entrepreneur John D. Hertz painted his taxis yellow based on a
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...
study alleging that yellow is the color most easily seen at a distance. * In Canada and the United States, school buses are almost uniformly painted a yellow color (often referred to as " school bus yellow") for purposes of visibility and safety, and British bus operators such as FirstGroup are attempting to introduce the concept there. * " Caterpillar yellow" and "high-visibility yellow" are used for highway construction equipment. * In the rules of the road, yellow (called "amber" in Britain) is a
traffic light Traffic lights, traffic signals, or stoplights – also known as robots in South Africa, Zambia, and Namibia – are signaling devices positioned at intersection (road), road intersections, pedestrian crossings, and other locations in order t ...
signal meaning "slow down", "caution", or "slow speed ahead". It is intermediate between green (go) and red (stop). In railway signaling, yellow is often the color for warning, slow down, such as with distant signals. * Selective yellow is used in some automotive headlamps and fog lights to reduce the dazzling effects of rain, snow, and fog.


Maritime signaling

* In
International maritime signal flags International maritime signal flags are various flags used to communicate with ships. The principal system of flags and associated codes is the International Code of Signals. Various navies have flag systems with additional flags and codes, and ...
a yellow flag denotes the letter "Q". It also means a ship asserts that it does not need to be quarantined.


Idioms and expressions

* Yellow-belly is an American expression which means a coward. The term comes from the 19th century and the exact origin is unknown, but it may refer to the color of sickness, which means a person lacks strength and stamina. * Yellow journalism is also an American term for news which present limited research to its findings. * Yellow pages refers in various countries to directories of telephone numbers, arranged alphabetically by the type of business or service offered. * Asian people, especially East Asians, have been racialized as yellow. ** The Yellow Peril was a term used in politics and popular fiction in the late 19th and early 20th century to describe the alleged economic and cultural danger posed to Europe and America by Chinese immigration. The term was first used by Kaiser Wilhelm II in Germany in 1895, and was the subject of numerous books and later films. ** Yellow fever is a slang phrase to describe an Asian race fetish. * High yellow was a term sometimes used in the early 20th century, to describe light-skinned African-Americans. * Yellow snow, snow that is yellow from urination.


See also

* Chromophobia * Lists of colors * Shades of yellow * Sodium-vapor lamp


Notes


References

* * * * * * * * * * * * {{Authority control Primary colors Secondary colors Optical spectrum Rainbow colors Web colors