ProbableIndirect, via a person or title
Prussian red
noun · first attested 19th century
The red inherited its name from a blue.
Potassium ferricyanide, a poisonous red crystalline salt used as a pigment, and the brownish red color of it.
Record
- Relationship
- Indirect, via a person or title
- Confidence
- ProbableThe conventional story is likely, with caveats.
- Attested
- 19th century
- Part of speech
- noun
Explanations here are written for this atlas. Dictionary text is not copied; the sources are linked so the claim can be checked.
- Step 1
Prussia
- In English
Prussian red
Prussian blue was first made in Berlin around 1706, and the family of cyanide salts that came out of it were known as prussiates. Leopold Gmelin isolated potassium ferricyanide in 1822, and as the red prussiate of potash it became Prussian red. Prussia was formally abolished in 1947, long after its color names had settled into English.
Also pinned to Prussia
1 more from the same place
Poland
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