* The sensation of color depends upon a peculiar function of the retina or optic nerve, in consequence of which rays of light produce different effects according to the length of their waves or undulations, waves of a certain length producing the sensation of red, shorter waves green, and those still shorter blue, etc. White, or ordinary, light consists of waves of various lengths so blended as to produce no effect of color, and the color of objects depends upon their power to absorb or reflect a greater or less proportion of the rays which fall upon them.

Give color to my pale cheek.
Shak.

They had let down the boat into the sea, under color as though they would have cast anchors out of the foreship.
Acts xxvii. 30.

That he should die is worthy policy;
But yet we want a color for his death.
Shak.

Boys and women are for the most part cattle of this color.
Shak.

In the United States each regiment of infantry and artillery has two colors, one national and one regimental.
Farrow.

* Color is express when it is averred in the pleading, and implied when it is implied in the pleading.

Body color. See under Body. -- Color blindness, total or partial inability to distinguish or recognize colors. See Daltonism. -- Complementary color, one of two colors so related to each other that when blended together they produce white light; -- so called because each color makes up to the other what it lacks to make it white. Artificial or pigment colors, when mixed, produce effects differing from those of the primary colors, in consequence of partial absorption. -- Of color (as persons, races, etc.), not of the white race; -- commonly meaning, esp. in the United States, of negro blood, pure or mixed. -- Primary colors, those developed from the solar beam by the prism, viz., red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, which are reduced by some authors to three, -- red, green, and violet-blue. These three are sometimes called fundamental colors. -- Subjective or Accidental color, a false or spurious color seen in some instances, owing to the persistence of the luminous impression upon the retina, and a gradual change of its character, as where a wheel perfectly white, and with a circumference regularly subdivided, is made to revolve rapidly over a dark object, the teeth of the wheel appear to the eye of different shades of color varying with the rapidity of rotation. See Accidental colors, under Accidental.

The rays, to speak properly, are not colored; in them there is nothing else than a certain power and disposition to stir up a sensation of this or that color.
Sir I. Newton.

He colors the falsehood of Æneas by an express command from Jupiter to forsake the queen.
Dryden.

That by his fellowship he color might
Both his estate and love from skill of any wight.
Spenser.