Paper short abstract:

Humans use colour to manipulate their personal appearance and environment (Hutchings 2004: 57). Colour terms play a significant part in both the English and Serbian folklore texts. The paper elaborates on advantages of using lexicographic data as an ethnographic source.

Paper long abstract:

Humans use colour to manipulate their personal appearance and environment. A large part of this usage falls within the area of oral tradition, folklore and symbolism (Hutchings 2004: 57). This paper elaborates on advantages of using lexicographic data as an ethnographic source. Admittedly, colour terms play a significant part in both the English and Serbian folklore texts. For instance, the motivation behind idiom into the blue into the unknown, can be deciphered from the website English Language and Usage: "The blue" generally refers to, either, the ocean or the sky. The wild blue yonder, for example, refers to the sky as it exists as an existential and physical frontier that pushes the limits of human engineering should humans wish to travel to or beyond it." Nevertheless, the corresponding Serbian idiom otići u beli svet lit. leave for the white world, has obscure origin. It could have stemmed from a universal approach to the colour 'white', i.e. a technical interpretation of 'white' as a non-colour, and people began associating 'white' with formless phenomena, something unfamiliar which is yet to be discovered (Colin 2004: 37). It could, however, be also due to an ancient Slavic belief of 'white' being the colour of the west, where the sun sets, as well as the empire of the dead and an unknown place (Filipović 1961: 6977). Finally, there are the geographic and climate reasons, i.e. the English have had centuries-long experience of sailing across the world’s oceans, and the Serbs have experienced heavy snowfall.