I always check various news sites when I’m here working; although I keep up with the news through newspapers and the radio, I like all the added extras you get on-line, being able to re-read something, having videos, links to other sites, quirky news from other parts of the country and the world. This morning I saw an item which caught my eye – chiefly because the predominant colour was a vibrant pink. it is thought that a ship in the channel shed some of its load in the recent storms, and washed ashore in Cornwall were literally thousands of bright pink plastic bottles thought to contain detergent. The photos were extraordinary,, but of course, plastic and detergent both pose a great threat to marine life, and so volunteers were out on the beaches collecting them up.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-35226958
I began to think about the word pink, and where it came from and if its meaning has changed… there are certainly lots of phrases and idioms attached to it…
- pinks – are sweet-smelling flowers of the dianthus family
- in the pink – of condition or health
- seeing pink elephants – apparently what drunks see… do they really? I doubt it!
- tickled pink – being really pleased about something
- the pink pound – first used in the Guardian in 1984 to describe the purchasing power of the LGBT community
- pink-collar – a pejorative term for ‘women’s’ work (as opposed to white-collar)
- pinko – radical, communist
- pink slip – discharge papers
- pink jackets/pinks – red jackets worn by huntsmen (from a tailor named Thomas Pink)
Pink as a colour seem to have come from the lovely pinks, those sweet flowers with the gorgeous smell… pink-coloured being a pale red. Pinks got their name from the shape of their petals from a similar word to the one we now use in pinking shears, those special scissors which cut a serrated edge to fabric or paper…. or perhaps not… perhaps the name of the flower came from a Dutch word meaning small which was joined to the word for eye, meaning half closed eyes, or small eyes… Going back to pinking shears – the word pink here means to perforate or cut, or even prick or stab…maybe these different origins are all true and they coalesced into the word and usage we have today.
See more on pink here:
Lois Elsden 
How about your little pinkie, your little finger.
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That comes from the Dutch, meaning little finger!
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