When discourse is a painting: color metaphors from Latin to Italian

This diachronic study is devoted to the semantic extensions developed by the Latin lexeme color and follows its evolution up to Italian colore. On the basis of lexicographic and corpus data, we explore the rise, diachronic persistence and/or decay of structured figurative meanings over a timespan of approximately 2,000 years. The metaphorical development we identified investigating the diachronic semantics of color(e) between Latin and Italian can be associated with a well-known semantic pathway of change, whereby subjective meanings tend to evolve from non-subjective ones. The chapter also offers a theoretical reassessment of some relevant issues to be considered when dealing with the “long” diachrony of metaphors, namely the culturally specific motivations triggering their emergence, the historical persistence of etymological meanings, and the role of discourse traditions in the transmission of metaphors originated as technical concepts.