pink: English has three distinct words pink. The colour term [18] appears to have come, by a bizarre series of twists, from an early Dutch word meaning ‘small’. This was pinck (source also of the colloquial English pinkie ‘little finger’ [19]). It was used in the phrase pinck oogen, literally ‘small eyes’, hence ‘half-closed eyes’, which was borrowed into English and partially translated as pink eyes.
It has been speculated that this was a name given to a plant of the species Dianthus, which first emerged in the abbreviated form pink in the 16th century. Many of these plants have pale red flowers, and so by the 18th century pink was being used for ‘pale red’. Pink ‘pierce’ [14], now preserved mainly in pinking shears, is probably of Low German origin (Low German has pinken ‘peck’).
And pink (of an engine) ‘make knocking sounds’ [20] is presumably imitative in origin.
pink (n., adj.)
1570s, common name of Dianthus, a garden plant of various colors, of unknown origin. Its use for "pale rose color" first recorded 1733 (pink-coloured is recorded from 1680s), from one of the colors of the flowers. The plant name is perhaps from pink (v.) via notion of "perforated" petals, or from Dutch pink "small" (see pinkie), from the term pinck oogen "half-closed eyes," literally "small eyes," which was borrowed into English (1570s) and may have been used as a name for Dianthus, which sometimes has pale red flowers.
The flower meaning led (by 1590s) to a figurative use for "the flower" or finest example of anything (as in Mercutio's "Nay, I am the very pinck of curtesie," Rom. & Jul. II.iv.61). Political noun sense "person perceived as left of center but not entirely radical (i.e. red)" is attested by 1927, but the image dates to at least 1837. Pink slip "discharge notice" is first recorded 1915. To see pink elephants "hallucinate from alcoholism" first recorded 1913 in Jack London's "John Barleycorn."
pink (v.)
c. 1200, pungde "pierce, stab," later (early 14c.) "make holes in; spur a horse," of uncertain origin; perhaps from a Romanic stem that also yielded French piquer, Spanish picar (see pike (n.2)). Or perhaps from Old English pyngan and directly from Latin pungere "to prick, pierce" (see pungent). Surviving mainly in pinking shears.
双语例句
1. He was holding a cloth that dripped pink drops upon the floor.
他正拿着一块布，布上粉红色的水滴落在地板上。
来自柯林斯例句
2. A glass of red wine keeps you in the pink.
一杯红酒有益健康。
来自柯林斯例句
3. Businesses are now more aware of the importance of the "pink pound".
现在商家更加意识到同性恋族群消费力、即所谓“粉红英镑”的重要性。
来自柯林斯例句
4. Mr. Long was now cutting himself a piece of the pink cake.
朗先生正在给自己切一块粉色蛋糕。
来自柯林斯例句
5. She was wearing a flimsy pink dress that streamed out behind her.
