sky-blue pink

English

A sky-blue pink sky at sunset.

Noun

sky-blue pink (uncountable)

1. The colour that the sky sometimes takes at sunrise and sunset, blue in places and pink in places (sometimes with the sky being blue and clouds pink, sometimes with the whole sky being a spectrum from blue to pink).
   • 1999, The Ladies' Home Journal:

     Before us, framing the skyscrapers of Manhattan, was a golden skyline filled with vibrant blues and pinks and softer hues of violet, rose and lavender. "I've always called it sky blue-pink," I answered. "Is that a real word?" Nell asked, confident that I, who work with words for a living, would know. "It is to me." I first heard that term at the eighth-grade graduation assembly rehearsal in the little country town where I grew up.

   • 2005, Clive Cussler, Paul Kemprecos, Lost City, Penguin, →ISBN:

     The summer snow capping the jagged summits was bathed in a soft sky-blue pink from the lowering sun. Fauchard filled his red-rimmed eyes with the magnificent beauty, as he cocked his ear and listened to the exhaust sound produced by the eighty-horsepower, four-stroke Gnome rotary engine that powered the Morane-Saulnier N aircraft. All was well.

   • 2013, Anthony J. Agostinelli, The Professor Was Dead, →ISBN, page 11:

     [It] was sunset time. In a short while, the sky would turn sky-blue pink as the earth turned away from the sun and the clouds remained.

   • 2014, Candice Ransom, Seeing Sky-Blue Pink, Carolrhoda Books, →ISBN:

     Sam came out carrying a plastic bag of trash. He scanned the sky. “Guess what? Your favorite color is about to appear.” “What color?” Maddie glanced up. The sun was sliding behind the woods. He sat down beside her. “Sky-blue pink, what else?” Maddie pursed her lips. “That color is not on any of my chalks or crayons. Or these paint papers. It's not real.” “This color is better than any color you've ever seen. I promise. Just watch.” Puffy sheep clouds floated across the blue-sky field.

2. A nonspecific or made-up colour.
   • 1893 September 13, Arizona Weekly Journal-Miner:

     “I can’t tell the colour,” said Binns. “It was like a sky blue pink, with a shade of greeny brown, or something like that.”

   • 1910, Howard R. Garis, Sammie and Susie Littletail:

     He splashed around and scattered the skilligimink color all over the kitchen, and when his mamma and Susie fished him out, if he wasn’t dyed the most beautiful sky-blue-pink you ever saw!

   • 1999, Avram Davidson, Grania Davis, Richard A. Lupoff, editors, The Investigations of Avram Davidson, →ISBN, page 33:

     She had seemed okay. When Mr. Felber said to her, handing over the package (cosmetics, hairpins, chewing gum), “Well, today's the big day, eh, Sally?” she had smiled and said, “I'm so happy, Mr. Felber.” He had wished her all the luck in the world. By now it was half-past two. Suddenly Aunt Emma, who had been saying, “Oh, I wouldn't worry, Peg, she's prob'ly just wandering around in a kind of sky-blue-pink daze”—Aunt Emma suddenly burst into tears[.]

   • 2012, John Holt, A Killing In The City, →ISBN, page 23:

     It was just a few short yards further on. Tom Kendall, Private Detective emblazoned proudly across the door in dark blue. That had been Mollie's idea. He had wanted the colour to be bright red. Blue is more sophisticated, she had said. It was more refined. It indicates authority, and gives confidence. So blue it was. What did he know anyway? One colour was as good as any other wasn't it? Blue, red, sky blue pink, what difference? Except yellow, he wasn't fond of yellow.

Alternative forms

• sky blue pink, sky-blue-pink, sky blue-pink

See also

• (nonspecific colour): see list in reddish-green (nonsense colour in philosophy)

References

• World Wide Words: Sky-blue pink