Puce Puce Puce is a dark red or purple brown color, a brownish purple or a "dark reddish brown." "Puce" is the French word for "flea". The color is said to be the color of bloodstains on linen or bedsheets, even after being laundered, from a flea's droppings, or after a flea has been crushed. The "Oxford English Dictionary" ("OED") dates the first English use of "puce" as a color to 1778. The name comes from the French word "puce", or flea, which comes from the Latin words for flea, "pulicem" or "pulex". According to the "Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology",
Shades of purple those colors which are different in HTML and X11. This color can be called X11 purple. The traditional name for this tone of purple is veronica. The first recorded use of "veronica" as a color name in English was in 1919. Displayed at right is the web color medium purple. This color is a medium shade of the bright "X11 purple" shown above. The color defined as purple in the Munsell color system (Munsell 5P) is shown at right. The "Munsell color system" is a color space that specifies colors based on three color dimensions: hue, value (lightness), and chroma