Brown

Brown
— Common connotations —
soil, autumn, earth, skin, maple leaf, chocolate, coffee, caramel, stone, Africa, African culture, Indigenous
— Color coordinates —
Hex triplet		#964B00
RGBB	(r, g, b)	(150, 75, 0)
HSV	(h, s, v)	(30°, 100%, 59%)
Source		[Unsourced]
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)
— Some variations of Brown —
Brown (X11)
Dark Brown
Pale Brown

Brown is a color term, denoting a range of composite colors produced by a mixture of orange, red, rose, or yellow with black or gray. The term is from Old English brún, in origin for any dusky or dark shade of color.^[1] The Common Germanic adjective *brûnoz, *brûnâ meant both dark colors and a glistening or shining quality, whence burnish. The current meaning developed in Middle English from the 14th century.^[2]

The adjective is applied to naturally occurring colors, referring to animal fur, human hair, human skin pigmentation (tans), partially charred or carbonized fiber as in toasted bread and other foods, peat, withered leaves, etc.^[3]

In terms of the visible spectrum, "brown" refers to high wavelength (low frequency) hues, yellow, orange, or red, in combination with low luminance or saturation.^[4] Since brown may cover a wide range of the visible spectrum, composite adjectives are used such as red brown, yellowish brown, dark brown or light brown.

The brown and orange disks of color are objectively identical, in identical gray surrounds, in this image; their perceived color categories depend on what white they are compared to.

As a color of low intensity, brown is a tertiary color: a mix of the three subtractive primary colors is brown if the cyan content is low. Brown exists as a color perception only in the presence of a brighter color contrast: yellow, orange, red, or rose objects are still perceived as such if the general illumination level is low, despite reflecting the same amount of red or orange light as a brown object would in normal lighting conditions.

The first recorded use of brown as a color name in English was in 1000. ^[5]

Variations of brown

.

Red-brown (web color "brown")

The web color called "brown" is displayed at right.

The historical and traditional name for this color is red-brown.

The color shown above at the top right at the head of this article (color #964B00) is the color normally and traditionally regarded as brown--a medium dark orange. Its h (hue) code is 30, which signifies a shade of orange. The color to the immediate right (color #A52A2A) that was chosen as the web color "brown"--a medium dark red--is the color traditionally called red-brown. That this color is a shade of red and not orange can be easily ascertained by inspecting its h (hue) code, which is 0, signifying a shade of red.

The first recorded use of red-brown as a color name in English was in 1682. ^[7]

Dark brown

The color dark brown is displayed at right.

Pale brown

The color pale brown is displayed at right.

Brown in nature

Mammals

• The brown rat or Norwegian rat (Rattus norvegicus) is one of the best known and most common rats.
• The brown bear (Ursus arctos) is a large bear distributed across much of northern Eurasia and North America.

Brown in culture

Animal Rights

A brown dog in a brown world.

• The Brown Dog affair was a political controversy about vivisection that raged in Edwardian England from 1903 until 1910.

Astronomy

• The planet Jupiter has orange, red, and brown coloration in its clouds.
• Astronomers have recently detected the existence of the long theorized formerly hypothetical but now known to be actual astronomical objects called brown dwarfs, which are intermediate in mass between a gas giant planet and a star.

Business

• Pullman Brown^[8] is the color of the United Parcel Service (UPS) delivery company with their trademark brown trucks and uniforms. UPS has filed two trademarks on the color brown to prevent other shipping companies (and possibly other companies in general) from using the color if it creates "market confusion." In its advertising, UPS refers to itself as "Brown" ("What can Brown do for you?").

The brown color scheme of Ubuntu (Linux)

City Planning

• Brownfields are abandoned, idled, or under-used industrial and commercial facilities where redevelopment for infill housing is complicated by real or perceived environmental contaminations.^[9]

Computing

• Ubuntu is well known for its default brown color scheme. The exact shades have changed from release to release, with a general trend towards lighter colors and 'shiny' graphics.

Cooking

A baked cake

• Browning is a process to remove excess fat from meat by heating, as under a broiler or in a frying pan, until it turns brown.
• Browning is also used to describe a range of chemical changes to food, desirable and undesirable. Examples of browning reactions include caramelization and the Maillard reaction (both generally desirable) and the process that leads to the undesirable browning of the flesh of cut apples, pears, potatos, and the like.

Ethnography

• Brown is sometimes used to refer to brown people in general or sometimes more specifically to the darker skinned Indo-Aryan and Dravidian of South Asia.
• The term brown or bronze may be used by mestizo or Amerindian Hispanics to describe themselves.
• Austronesians in the 19th century and 20th century were often referred to as the Malayan race or brown race. (A term for Austronesians often used today is Maritime Asian.)
• In her 1942 Glossary of Harlem Slang, Zora Neale Hurston placed "high yaller" at the beginning of the entry for her African American colorscale, which ran:

Food

• Chocolate is often associated with the color brown.
• Brownies are a favorite dessert.
• Boston brown bread is a popular bread made with molasses that is often sold in cans.
• In Japanese language, brown is described as Chairo (íÉêF, Cha-Iro^?), which means "tea color", meaning the color of the raw tea leaves used to make red tea, although green tea is the most popular tea in Japan.

Games

• In the billiard game of Snooker the 4-point snooker ball is brown.

Movies

• Four shades of brown^[10] is the title of a Swedish film from 2004

The brown earth during a drought

Music

• Little Brown Jug is a drinking song written in 1869 by Joseph Winner.
• Brown Sugar is one of the most popular songs by the Rolling Stones (Album: Sticky Fingers).
• The song "Brown Eyed Girl" is by Van Morrison (Album: Blowin' Your Mind!).
• The song "Wynona's Big Brown Beaver" is by the artist Primus (Album: Tales from the Punchbowl).
• Golden Brown is a popular song about heroin by The Stranglers.

Nature

Brown is a common human hair color

• Many soils are brown.
• Many kinds of wood and the bark of many trees are brown.
• Feces are usually brown.
• A large number of mammals and predatory birds have a brown coloration. This sometimes changes seasonally, and sometimes remains the same year-round. This color is likely related to camouflage, since the backdrop of some environments, such as the forest floor, is often brown, and especially in the spring and summertime when animals like the Snowshoe Hare get brown fur.

Parapsychology

• It is said that people who have brown auras are often unethical businessmen who are in business purely for the sake of greed, or people who are just generally greedy and avaricious.^[11]

Politics

• In the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, the Nazi paramilitary organization the Sturmabteilung (SA) wore brown uniforms and were known as the brownshirts. It was often said of members of the SA that they were like a beefsteak--"brown on the outside, and red on the inside"--because many of them were former Communists. The color brown was used to represent the Nazi vote on maps of electoral districts in Germany. If someone voted for the Nazis, they were said to be "voting brown". The national headquarters of the Nazi party, in Munich, was called the Brown House. The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 was called the Brown Revolution.^[12] At Adolf Hitler's Obersalzberg home, the Berghof, he slept in a "bed which was usually covered by a brown quilt embroidered with a huge swastika. The swastika also appeared on Hitler's brown satin pajamas, embroidered in black against a red background on the pocket. He had a matching brown silk robe."^[13]

Human sexuality

• In the bandana code of the gay leather subculture, wearing a brown bandana means that one is into the sexual fetish of scat.^[14]

Sports

• Brown is sometimes used as a team color or name, as in the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League, which got its name from its founder and long-time coach, Paul Brown, but also uses brown as a team color. The St. Louis Browns are a former Major League Baseball team, now known as the Baltimore Orioles; they do not use brown as a team color. For about 25 years, the San Diego Padres had brown as a primary team color.

Television

• In the TV show Firefly, a browncoat refers to a person who fought against the Anglo-Sino Alliance.

See also

• List of colors

References