The Greek word chrôma, which often means “color” and gives us various English words in that semantic field, primarily means “skin”—perhaps because the skin, with its changing tones, was the foremost experience ancient peoples had of color at the time that language was forming. One Greek author, Xenophon, uses the word to refer to facial […]

Original source: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2022/10/20/pure-color/