Word Color Map

What colour first comes to mind when you think of a word? Fire, blood, anger all clearly feel the redder of the bunch. An interesting writing exercise is to choose a colour, purple for example, and write (or rewrite) a paragraph in a way that feels very purpleIt occurs to me that there is not yet a word to describe pairing words together to echo a particular colour in a similar way that assonance or consonance echo a particular sound. Following in the same pattern, chrominance feels apt.

.

Curious as to the nature of word-color associations, I wanted to map out the colour-space of language. Writing a script to map out every wordOr at least the 10,000 most common words

along with the colour associated with each:

It turned out, in an unexpected way, to be very poetic! As you hover over different regions, it will display all the words associated with that colour— and sometimes these words will combine together in a very evocative or poetic way. For example:

• financial traffic burial
• exchange monetary and provide arrogant disposal
• barbecue gun siege
• stabbing sin thee juicy motive unarmed
• evangelical friend wed formerly
• bliss suddenly sympathetic move slow moment