I've thought my whole life that "taupe" was a color like "bone" or "off-white" in that it was a dull yellow, dirty color closer to a grayish beige or a mid-range "flesh" color.
And then after 26.2 years I've discovered that in fact, taupe is darker and more brown than that, and taupe is several dull colors ranging from my long-time notion of it through pink, lavender and brown.
It turns out that
a taupe is a mole (the animal, not the skin lesion or measurement). And this mole comes in a few different colors (and actually, "taupe" comes from its Latin name and it isn't called a "taupe," it's called a mole).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TaupeAnd a Google image search for taupe shows me colors that I might just as easily call "khaki", "sand", "mauve", "flesh," or "brown."
Google Image Search: TaupeI got on this taupe kick while shopping online for a good dress (or something) to wear on New Year's Eve. I was browsing Banana Republic and saw
a dress labeled as "taupe" and scoffed at BR's ability to identify colors. A good scoff can be fun but finding your scoff was unjustified can sting. But not this time because apparently "taupe" is any color you want it to be. And furthermore, I'm still not sure that dress is "taupe." (The "purple" one is absolutely purple.)
I've been noticing things like this about color lately. Before Thanksgiving at work I discovered that me and my co-worker have totally different ideas of "sky blue." I think it's a light, but bright color -- you know, like the sky. The Crayola sky blue is a little too dull for my sky tastes. But my co-worker kept telling me I was using "teal."
Ok, teal is no where near sky blue. Teal is more green than turquoise, which is a shade greener than what I think of as "sky blue." And I wondered if it was that we had different ideas of what "sky blue" is (like my taupe revelation) OR that we were physically seeing the color differently.
Taupe.