🌳🤢 has anyone else pondered this? Green thumb = good at cultivating plants. Looking a little green = could be sick…. anytime a movie/game wants you to recognize something is poisonous, what color do they usually use? Green. Yet “leafy greens” is a common term for a variety of edible vegetables.
I don’t think there’s any color where the exact same shade can pull such wildly different context as green does.
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Chlorophyll…Puke
Poisonous animals are also bright green sometimes. That might be part of it.Â
What about red? The color of love and passion and at the same time the color of anxiety and hatred. I think it’s like a medal, there are always two sides.
because plants are supposed to be green and humans are not.
I think it’s because green is naturally linked to life and growth, like plants and nature, but also to things that are toxic or decaying. Like, certain poisonous plants are green, so it just became this universal color for both life and danger.
Those 2 are not mutually exclusive at all
Nature wants to kill you all the times, most “natural” things are poisonous or will at the very least give you some terrible diarrhea, that’s not counting the fact that some 90% or even more of the diseitou can have are all “natural”
All the virus and bacteria and parasites are natural, all the rotten corpses are natural, nature is not the same as healthy
Poison: Green is the color of arsenic, which is one of the most iconic poisons around! Arsenic is standing in symbolically for a lot of other poisons in our cultural code. A quick drop into the rabbit hole of arsenic in wallpaper and other household items should give you some interesting stories.
Nausea: Some people’s skin looks literally green when they’re nauseated. When you’re nauseated, your blood vessels in your face constrict, basically subtracting the warm red hues from the face. Depending on your base skin-tone, this might make you look white, grey, yellow, or green. Green is the opposite color of red, so reduction in red where we expect it might make us perceive green even if the base color is just pale.
Now, why is green associated with envy? I don’t know.
Why is green classically the color of the heart chakra? I don’t know.
Would love answers to those two if anyone has them.
The theories for the negative associations seem to be the use of very toxic green paints (such as copper aresnate) in the 18th-19th century, the way some illnesses can give your skin a green tinge, and how many molds are a green color.
Plants are green, but there’s lots of poisonous plants.
Most poisons back in the day were made by highly poisonous plants. Hemlock comes to mind since it’s stalk is very green.
On top of that, poison green is usually either a very sickly color (like a snot or green vomit color) such as the “green around the gills” type of green to invoke sickness, OR a bright, unnatural radioactive green to indicate it is not safe to consume.
But that’s just my theory. Poison can also be commonly symbolized by purple. I’ve also seen yellow be used as a symbolic color of sickness, so it depends on the person who is making the symbolism.
Blue is supposed to be calming but is also used to represent sadness
poison and sickness are the the other side of natures coin
All colors represent/feels like something. It heavily depends on context, especially when you’re dealing with different languages, because sometimes there’s just not a word for green!
Poison and germs come from nature
Well… sickness is not unnatural. In fact, you are probably the most full of life you will ever be if you are sick.
Similarly – rotting food is actually more alive than fresh or shelf stable food.
Sickness and rot are nature’s attempt to reclaim biomass. Medication is just a way of saying not today nature!
Probably for the duality nature represents: healing, therapeutic, nourishing qualities of plants, alongside nature’s survival of the fittest attitude, where plants could also make you very sick and kill you.Â
Could be chalked up to color opposites, too: red is the color of our blood, whereas green is red’s complimentary opposite. So even though green is a natural color, it is also opposite of what’s inside us, so perhaps that may be why it is used to depict poison.
My ex had surgery, and during his bedrest for the first few days, he hurt so bad, his skin actually took on a greenish hue. I figured that’s where that term came from.
Mister Yuk was green.
Anything is poison if it’s in excess. Green represents balance as well. So yeah, it’s funny how green is like that.
Probably due to green being associated with mold, with envy, with vomit, with diarrhea, with camouflage, with certain poisonous animals, and with certain poisonous plants.
Out of every type of poisonous thing out there, plants are most of them.
I’ve actually seen a guy with severe nausea turn a shade of green on his neck under his ears.Â