Word Court

WILLIAM PEAK, of Easton, Maryland, writes, "Does the term robin's-egg blue have the same meaning in England as it does in the United States? Old World robins are an entirely different species from our own; and their eggs, at least as illustrated in J. Felix's Oiseaux des pays d'Europe , appear to be an undistinguished brown.

Yet the other day I heard a ceramics expert on the British version of Antiques Roadshow say 'robin's-egg blue' in describing a piece of pottery. Have the British adopted what must seem to them an illogical Americanism, or are the French colorblind?" You're right that the European robin, Erithacus rubecula , isn't the same as our robin, Turdus migratorius , otherwise known as the red-breasted thrush. Evidently, because both birds have a red breast, colonists who came from Great Britain applied the old, nostalgic name to the bird in the New World. Other bright-breasted ...