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",
The Tale of Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea The book, mentioning a microscope which increases by 5,000,000 times, the likes of which are being used now in nanotechnology, featured in a "Nature Physics" article in 2007. In Russian language the nickname of the hero, Levsha (Leftie) has become a reference to an exceptionally skilled common-folk craftsman, and the expression "to shoe a flea" has become an idiomatic phrase signifying craftsman's feat. The Tale of Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea "The Tale of Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea" (, Skaz o Tulskom kosom Levshe i o stalnoy Blokhe), "The Tale of the Crosseyed