Sunday, 21 August 2016

Pthalo (August)



This August I went in search of Pthalo. Oxford does not know about Pthalo, at least not the Shorter. Google’s first hit is Wordnik: “'pthalo' has been looked up 1705 times, is no one's favorite word yet, has been added to 2 lists, has 6 comments, and is not a valid Scrabble word.” It’s  still edging its way into Common English, an artist’s contraction of phthalocyanine, a synthetic compound discovered by accident in 1927. The substance inspires the blues: monastral blue, phthalo blue, helio blue, thalo blue, Winsor blue, phthalocyanine blue, C.I. Pigment Blue 15:2, Copper phthalocyanine blue, and Cu-Phthaloblue. 


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