Midnight blue is a dark shade of blue named for its resemblance to the identifiably blue color of a moonlit night sky on or near the night of a full moon. Midnight blue is the color of a vat full of Indigo dye; therefore, midnight blue may also be considered a dark shade of indigo. Midnight blue is identifiably blue to the eye in sun-light or full-spectrum light, but can appear black under certain more limited spectrums sometimes found in artificial lighting (especially early 20th century incandescent). As a consequence, it is often colloquially confused with black-blue, which is a black with a blue undertone, or deep navy, which is a blue so dark it is nearly black.
There are two major shades of midnight blue—the X11 color and the Crayola color. This color was originally called midnight. The first recorded use of midnight as a color name in English was in 1915.
Read more about Midnight Blue: Midnight Blue, Midnight Blue in Culture
Famous quotes containing the words midnight and/or blue:
“Such as the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman’s Woe!”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“When the inhabitants of some sequestered island first descry the “big canoe” of the European rolling through the blue waters towards their shores, they rush down to the beach in crowds, and with open arms stand ready to embrace the strangers. Fatal embrace! They fold to their bosoms the vipers whose sting is destined to poison all their joys; and the instinctive feeling of love within their breasts is soon converted into the bitterest hate.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)