mixture of white, or (in the case of dyes or washes) by excess of aqueous or other liquid medium; as, a deep, medium, light, pale or delicate (pallid) tint of red. The term cannot correctly be used in any other sense.
Shade.— Any color (pure or broken) darkened by shadow or (in the case of pigments) by admixture of black; exactly the opposite of tint; as a medium, dark, or very dark (dusky) shade of red.
Tone.—"Each step in a color scale is a tone of that color."[1] The term tone cannot, however, be properly applied to a step in the spectrum scale, in which each contiguous pair of the six distinct spectrum or "fundamental" colors are connected by hues. Hence tone[2] is exclusively applicable to the steps in a scale of a single color or hue, comprising the full color (in the center) and graduated tints and shades leading off therefrom in opposite directions ; or of neutral gray similarly graduated in tone from the darkest shade to the palest tint. Each one of the colored blocks in the vertical scales of the plates in this work represents a separate tone of that color.
Scale.—A linear series of colors showing a gradual transition from one to another, or a similar series of tones of one color. The first is a chromatic scale[3] (or scale of colors and hues) and in the plates of this work is represented by each horizontal series ; the second is a
- ↑ Milton Bradley: Elementary Color, p. 25.
- ↑ Exception has been taken in a recent work ("A Color Notation," by A. H. Munsell) to the use of the term toue in this connection, on the ground that its proper use belongs to music, and the term value, is substituted. The same line of reasoning would, however, certainly require the discarding of chromatic scale as a term of music nomenclature, since its derivation is clearly from color (chroma). Furthermore, the word "value" is even more elastic in its application than tone, and, all things considered, the present writer, at least, fails to see that any improvement is made by the proposed change.
- ↑ The term chromatic scale has unfortunately been appropriated for a very different use (in music) ; nevertheless it is strictly correct in the present sense while in the other it is not, though firmly established by long usage. The term spectrum scale is not adequate, as a substitute, because the spectrum series of colors is incomplete through absence of the hues connecting violet with red , which are necessary to show the full scale of pure colors and hues.
