These challenges really started with the switch from natural dyes to synthetic dyes and colors.

Dyes became a byproduct of attempts at chemical experiments in the 1800s, really.

Dyes became chemistry as opposed to something that, you know, your local dyer did with plants in the backyard.

And as that happened, then any sort of main center of academic chemical inquiry became a place where color was made.

And in particular, that ended up being Germany for most of the 1800s.

Germany's dyes were synthesized in such a way that they were very bright, they were color fast, they were light fast.

And the synthetic dyes also just had this range of colors that was really difficult to get out of natural dyeing.

Godloff was already working on a new system for the Color Council, but this was about big picture integration.

And he says, "I hope that some readers will read them as they were written, slowly and with more patience than effort." What do you think he means by that, more patience than effort?

Oh, I think even though I love language and I love hearing language read, there is a particular, there's poetry voice.

Uh, I just used poetry voice, right? There's this particular cadence that people use when they read poetry, and, and it's not a natural speaking cadence.

It focuses on the rhythm of the piece, of trying to space out words.

That takes effort.

I wonder, too, if some of what Barry means is that there is...

Poetry can feel very, a little too highfalutin for some people, right? There is this idea that people have in their minds that like, to read poetry I need a book, and I need to be in a, you know, beautiful Victorian setting, and I need to have the time, and I...

Corrie, that is so deep.

[laughs]

And said, and said, "This is all very complicated," but didn't actually define much.

And I.H. picked up again for the third.

As I said in the first episode, he died suddenly in the middle of defining, and that's where we get our second major and hidden color definer, and that is his wife, Margaret Godlove.

Margaret was a scientist.

She was a, she had a bachelor's in chemistry.

She worked at DuPont as a file clerk.

Mm-hmm.

[laughs]

... more often.

I would create compound adjectives out of moist, so we've got moistful or moisty.

I would resurrect the verb moistify.

Oh.

And moist is always at the top of the list.

"Oh, I hate moist.

It's so gross." And, like, uh, if you wanna go find the studies that have been written on why people don't like the combination of sounds that result in the word moist, you can, but I just think, like, you know, sometimes moist is the word you need to use.

And during World War I, it also became a wartime concern.

Absolutely.

So there was a blockade between, you know, German boats couldn't leave, couldn't export anything, and dyes ended up being used in so many different places that when German dyes were no longer available on the worldwide market, suddenly you had all of these problems.

You know, our money uses dye.

[laughs] That's, that's a synthetic dye.

Uniforms require dye.

And-Signaling flares require colorants that are made in Germany.

Godlove was already working on a new system for the Color Council, but this was about big picture integration.

Why did these definitions stand out so much to you?

Well, the Third was a really pivotal dictionary in the history of North American dictionaries.

It was, as you mentioned, released in 1961, and it marked a huge difference in how dictionaries were written and the kinds of information that dictionaries conveyed to the public.

So prior to the Third, dictionaries were kind of like combination dictionaries and encyclopedias, so they'd have lots of extra information about not just what color the flower sweet William is, but where you can find it, who developed the cultivars, where it grows well.

And the Third, when the managing editor for the Third, whose name was Philip Babcock Gove, came in to Merriam-Webster, he said, "We can't afford the space, first of all, for all of this extra information, but also language really needs to be structured, consistent, and we need to make sure that we're defining things as if we are objective observers of the language, as opposed to people who just read a lot and have a general idea of what something means." So that means the definitions in the Third are very dry.

They're very formulaic.

Um, if you've read a dictionary, you know, published since 1961, you've probably encountered some of the types of language that the Third introduced, like the state or condition of.

How are those changes at that time being felt in the world of colors?

[laughs]

So the first lethal chemical weapon used on the battlefield, which was chlorine gas, was made by dyestuff manufacture.

The second lethal chemical weapon, phosgene gas, which replaced chlorine gas, was also a byproduct of dyestuff manufacture.

So after World War I, when all of this came to light, America did not wanna be caught on the back foot again technologically.

So they poured tons of money into areas of scientific and technological research that they felt they needed to have to maintain world peace and national security.

And because dyes had been weaponized, they reasoned that they needed to be able to understand as much as they could about the manufacture and storing and applications of color as possible.

So they poured all of this money into color research.

That's what turns people libertarian.

[laughs]

It just...

Because in order for people to be able to latch onto those definitions, they need to know what the colors that those definitions are in comparison to are.

And this is really where this whole thing breaks down because color names and their popularity change dramatically from year to year, decade to decade.

And so when the third was being written, these definitions used colors that were pretty familiar to folks.

They were common in commercial applications.

But by the time the third was published, after all these definitions were done, lots of those colors had fallen out of use, and new colors were not just being used, but new colors had been developed that weren't even on this space.

Were there moments of discovery that were especially important for the book?

It's this color.

Sure.

But what happens when someone has impaired color vision? Or what happens when the color that I wanna show you is on something, paper, let's say, that is going to be a different medium than the thing I need you to match it to? If I show you a paint chip and I say, "I would like you, uh, Mr.

Mike Carothers, to mix me a gallon of paint in this beautiful color that's called rejuvenate," and you say, "Great.

Is that going on your bathroom wall?" And I say, "Yes." And then you say, "All right.

Would you like that in eggshell, satin, matte, semi-gloss, or gloss finish?" And I say, "Semi-gloss.

Why not? Sounds fancy." I get it home and I put it on my wall.

It was horrible, but it sounded great, and the little chip looked great, but on a whole room it was terrible.

Is that why we do lots of colors have German names like Prussian blue? I know that's not Germany, but.

No.

And in fact, most of the colors that Germany exported at that point were all like they had chemical names.

So azo dyes, for instance, or aniline green, which doesn't mean anything to anybody unless you're a chemist and you work in aniline dyes.

But during World War I, suddenly the dye works, which couldn't export dyes anymore.

They were converted into munitions factories and chemical weapons factories.

And so the U.S. government got very nervous because if you can make something lethal out of something as simple as, you know, a black dye, then we need to get our little governmental mitts into all of these areas.

American Heritage at that time?