Connotations of Green: Where Do They Come From?
Green’s symbolism can be explained by (1) plant leaves, (2) being opposite to red, and (3) US one-dollar bills.
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According to our survey of the four major color connotation websites (see my previous article for detail), the color of green symbolizes as many as 13 things, ranging from
(i) ambition, (ii) environment, (iii) envy/jealousy, (iv) fertility, (v) finances/money, (vi) freshness, (vii) greed,
to
(viii) growth, (ix) harmony, (x) inexperienced, (xi) nature, (xii) renewal, and (xiii) safety.
I’ve figured out these connections of green can be derived from just three facts about green:
1. It’s the color of a leaf.
2. Green is opposite to bloody red.
3. It’s the colour of greenbacks.
1. Leaf
1.1. Sprouting leaf
Light green is the colour we see in spring, as sprouting leaves.
Spring is the moment in which we are impressed by the vitality of plants, especially those trees which have survived cold winter by pretending to be dead but actually not. This fact can explain a large number of connotations that green has.
If you see it as the beginning of a plant’s life, green implies (vi) freshness.
The Furniture Cave, a complex that houses antique dealers in London, paints its exterior with green, suggesting that visitors will see fresh-looking, rather than tired-looking, antique items inside the building:
The flip side of freshness is being the beginner or (x) inexperienced.
In Japan, those who just obtained their driver’s license are required by law to stick the wakaba mark on their car until one year has passed:
Wakaba is a Japanese term for a young leaf. The leaf-motif sticker is half-green and half-yellow. According to some source in Japanese, the green indeed suggests inexperience (like a new leaf) and, as discussed in our article on yellow, the yellow indicates caution: “A beginner driver may drive in an unexpected way, so be careful.”
For Japanese people, the wakaba mark is now the symbol of beginners in general. It’s even part of the unicode character set: 🔰(code point U+1F530).
1.2 Life cycle
If we focus on the cycle of a plant’s life, green symbolises (iv) fertility, (viii) growth and (xii) renewal. The word green is closely related to the Old English verb growan, which means “to grow”.
The cover of a book on fertility uses the photo of a baby on the green background:
The stock market news often uses green triangles to indicate the “growth” of a stock price:
An anti-aging skincare product uses green for the color of its bottle, suggesting its efficacy of renewing the skin:
1.3 Forests
Deep green is the colour of forests:
Since any civilisation started by cutting down trees in a forest to build a house or grow crops, forests are an antithesis of civilisations, especially when humans go too far. Green thus symbolises (ii) environment and (xi) nature.
Consequently, the color of green is a very popular choice to remind people of the importance of protecting the environment:
In an arid climate, forests indicate where water can be found, and thus it’s a paradise. Islam, a religion born and spread in the arid climate zone of the Middle East and North Africa, venerates the colour of green, symbolising the paradise full of lush vegetation.
In Damascus, the capital city of Syria, all the mosques are illuminated in green:
2. Opposite to Red
In terms of pigments, green is a colour opposite to red. Green can be made by mixing blue and yellow, primary colours except red. The contrast to red is even enhanced by green leaves of plants versus red bloods of animals. Interestingly, chlorophyl and hemoglobin, each responsible for green in plant leaves and red in animal bloods, have a similar molecular structure while the metal ion at the core is different (magnesium and iron, respectively):
The green’s inherent contrast to red can explain the following three sets of connotations of green.
2.1 Opposite to danger
First, green is a signal of (xiii) safety, as oppose to red as a signal of danger. Green was chosen as a go sign of traffic light as it cannot be mistaken for red. The permanent residence permit in the United States is called “green card”.
One of the best use of green as the symbol of safety in the traffic context is the interior of Riverside Museum in Glasgow. A museum of transportation, it features the green-colored ceiling, constantly encouraging the visitors to go forwards:
For more on Riverside Museum, read another article of mine.
2.2 Opposite to aggression
Second, green symbolises (ix) harmony, as opposed to the red symbolism of harmony-breaking qualities such as aggression, anger, and determination.
[I haven’t managed to find an example of using green as the symbol of harmony. If you know any, please post a commend below.]
2.3 Opposite to love
The association of (iii) envy/jealousy with green could also be due to green as opposite to red. This symbolism traces back to Shakespeare’s play Othello, in which jealousy, the main theme of the play, is likened to “the green-eyed monster”. Why did Shakespeare portrait jealousy as something green? I would propose that Shakespeare saw green as opposite to red, the symbol of love. The play is about Othello’s jealousy after starting to doubt his wife’s relationship with his lieutenant, which led to the killing of his wife. Othello’s act is totally opposite to love.
Perhaps the most famous application of green as the symbol of jealousy is Edvard Munch’s painting entitled “Jealousy”:
3. Greenbacks
The back side of the United States one dollar bill has been printed in green since 1861. According to Nix (2014), the use of green ink prevented counterfeiting with photographs during the days of black-and-white photography. While such a functionality of green ink is no longer relevant, green is stuck on the flip side of the one dollar bill.
It is therefore natural that green is associated with (v) finances/money in the United States, and with the emotions triggered by the pursuit of money: (vii) greed and (i) ambition.
Applications in art and design
Perhaps not the most beautiful example, but this recycle trash bin, seen at my hotel room of Scandic Byporten in Oslo in August 2018, takes advantage of green’s double-sided nature: the color of plant leaves and the color opposite to red.
Organic waste is most closely associated with nature among all kinds of rubbish. So green is a sensible choice. Then as the color opposite to green, red is used for other kinds of waste that’s not natural.
Malevich, an early 20th-century Russian painter of the fame for Black Square, uses green for the background of his more figurative work entitled “Portrait of a Woman”:
Green as the background suggests the presence of a forest behind the woman. However, the use of unrealistic primary colors on the woman’s body (yellow for her nose, blue for her collar, red for the left half of her clothes) also suggests that green may simply be used as the color opposite to red.
This ambiguity, in my view, echoes the painter’s own inner struggle: this painting was drawn when Malevich was moving away from his abstract painting style. After his success as an abstract painter in the 1910s, Malevich “eventually returned to representational paintings” (Artsy, n.d.). And “Portrait of a Woman” was painted when “Malevich had just started painting again” (Tate, n.d.).
References
Artsy (n.d.) “Kasimir Severinovich Malevich”, Artsy.net, accessed on Jun. 10, 2021.
Nix, Elizabeth (2014) “Why is American currency green?”, History, Sep. 3, 2014.
Tate (n.d.) “Atelier Mourlot Malevich Portrait of a Female (1992 lithograph)”, Tate Shop, accessed on Jun. 10, 2021.
