Crimson is a deep rich red with a hint of purple. Crimson velvet, turn crimson, a crimson sky.
It sits on the blue side of red, where scarlet sits on the orange side. Turn crimson means to blush deeply. The dye came from kermes, insects crushed to make it, which is where the word comes from — and the same trade gave carmine and cochineal, so several English colour words are named after the insects they were made from. Note crimson as a verb, now literary.
1adjectivecrimsonOf a deep rich red with a hint of purple.
“Crimson roses climbed over the old garden wall.”
crimson is a colour.
Arabic qirmiz named the kermes insect from which the dye was made, and the word travelled through Spanish and French. Carmine and kermes are the same insect, so the colour is named after a beetle.
Proto-Indo-European
*kʷŕ̥mis
Proto-Indo-Iranian
*kŕ̥miš
fa-cls
کرمست
Arabic
قِرْمِز
osp
cremesín
French
cramoisin
Middle English
cremesyn
English, today
crimson
Late Middle English cremesyn, from obsolete French cramoisin or osp cremesín, from Arabic قِرْمِز, from fa-cls کرمست, from pal -; see Proto-Indo-Iranian kŕ̥miš. Cognate with Sanskrit कृमिज. Doublet of kermes; also see carmine.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA