impossible color

English

Noun

impossible color (plural impossible colors)

  1. A color that the human eye normally cannot see, but might seem to appear under rare conditions or due to visual illusions.
    • 2024 September 24, Tyler Thrasher, Terry Mudge, The Universe in 100 Colors: Weird and Wondrous Colors from Science and Nature, Sasquatch Books, →ISBN, page 228:
      If you're still with us, there is one last impossible color we’d like to share. Imaginary colors are those that mathematically exist, sure, but we’ll never see them.
    • 2025 May 6, Anthony Dunne, Fiona Raby, “2: An Archive of Impossible Objects”, in Not Here, Not Now: Speculative Thought, Impossibility, and the Design Imagination, MIT Press, →ISBN:
      Self-luminous red, reddish green, stygian blue, and hyperbolic orange are all examples of impossible colors, a category that also includes chimerical, forbidden, imaginary, nonrealizable, and nonphysical colors. … There are two main categories of impossible color: those that lie just beyond human perception and are impossible to see, but exist, and those that do not exist physically, but we can "see" in the mind.
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