What colour?

[Ice-Maiden]

My grandmother always used to say "sky-blue pink". Has anyone else heard of this expression, and would you say it was a kind of lavender shade?

[andy-hughes]

I have heard the phrase - and i thinki it designed to infer nonsense - sky-blue and pink are not compatible at all - it's like saying striped polkadots or greeny orange - it doesn't actually mean anything.

[Ice-Maiden]

Thank you. You could well be right, except that a friend in Cornwall swears it's a colour - something on the lines of mauve!

[valerieb1254]

What we used to say was.....Sky blue pink with yellow dots on. As for the colour of Sky-blue pink,I don't really know.

[Ice-Maiden]

That's a nice one, Valerieb!

[scousejones]

when I was a child in the 1920s, a usual answer to the question, "What colour is it?" would be, "Sky-blue Pink with a Finny-Haddy border", Finny-Haddy being a smoked haddockfrom Findon in Scotland.

[sophie_1003]

sky blue pink with yellow polka dots- complete nonsense but i suppose if you mixed sky blue and pink it would make a purpley colour!

[valerieb1254]

It wasn't meant to make sense sophie_1003, it was just a saying we had when I was young.

[taichiperson]

It was common when I was little too - my Mum was from
Dorchester and moved to Wolverhampton where she met my Dad in the fifties. Where did the rest of you grow up? We moved to the Channel Islands when I was three but think it was already in my parents' vocabulary.

[geo0939]

For scousejones: Your answer is basically correct, but Findon is colloquially pronounced Finnon, ie; Finnon Haddie.

[burnhal]

ours in yorkshire was 'sky blue pink with a yellow border'

[scousejones]

geo0939. I bow to your superior knowledge. Iwas never very good at splitting hairs

[Quizmonster]

The earliest-recorded version of this fantasy colour was created by the British writer, Gerald Kersh, in a book published in 1942. He wrote this of one of his characters, "Bill could swear that black was white and green was sky-blue-pink." All the versions with polka-dots etc were simply variants on that original.

[sophie_1003]

i wasn't saying that it was menat to make sense! am aware that it is just a saying but was just saying, if one were to mix sky blue and pink together it probably would make a purpley colour

[Maggie_words]

The Oxford Dictionary records examples of "sky blue pink" as early as 1880. One meaning of "sky blue pink" is a colour "sometimes compared to a sky at sunset". The alternative meaning is "an imaginary colour". In my Stockport childhood, the imaginary colour was always "sky blue pink with a yellow border".

[Aroundy]

In Bristol, we used to say, sky blue pink, shot with a carrot, to indicate a jokey reference to a colour. I always loved hearing that phrase. Nobody where I live now has heard of it! 

However at sunset I love to see the sky. With mauve,bluey pink hues. 

[Aroundy]

In Bristol back in the 1960s to 1980s we used to say, sky blue pink, shot with a carrot, to indicate a jokey reference to a colour. I always loved hearing that phrase. Nobody where I live now has heard of it! 

 

However at sunset I love to see the sky. With mauve,bluey pink hues.