We are taught the rainbow is composed of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, and sometimes that there are invisible colors, infrared and ultraviolet, on either side.

Benjamin Moore's “Off White Collection” of paint colors has 152 shades of creamy neutrals. Cosmetics firm M.A.C. offers 200 named colors of lipstick, nearly all of them reddish.

Most colors of the spectrum can be achieved within about 24 hours. The A.L.D. process was invented in 1974, and has been used by the semiconductor industry to prepare microchips since the 1990s.

We might be told that color has something to do with light, or even be shown a prism, through which light refracts to produce a rainbow. This is true, but the human brain and visual system can ...