Other forms: violets
Violet is a blue-leaning purple. A violet sky, violet ink, deep violet.
It sits between blue and purple, nearer the blue, and in the spectrum violet is the shortest visible wavelength — which is why ultraviolet lies just beyond it. A violet is also the small spring flower of that colour, and shrinking violet is a fixed phrase for somebody very shy. Note that violet and purple are not the same: purple is a mixture of red and blue, and spectral violet is a single wavelength.
1adjectivevioletA blue-leaning purple.
“The sky turned violet as the sun went down behind the hills.”
2nounsmallA small spring flower of that colour.
“There were violets along the whole length of the bank.”
violet is a colour, or a flower.
Latin viola named the flower, and the colour was named after it — as with orange, rose and lavender. English does this constantly: a surprising share of its colour words began as the names of plants.
Middle English
violet
English, today
violet
From Middle English violet. Middle English violet, vyolet, vyolette, from Old French violette, from Latin viola (“violet”) + -ette. Cognate with Lithuanian violetinė (“purple, violet”) and Spanish violeta (“purple, violet”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Colours & Patterns