The Unnamed Colour

Imagine that you encounter a colour you have never seen before. It is not a new shade of red or green, not a subtle mixture of the known palette, but something utterly outside your vocabulary of hues.

You perceive it vividly. It is undeniable, radiant, present. Yet you cannot name it, cannot even place it. The mind strains to compare — “it is like…” — but every likeness fails.

For a moment, the unnamed colour overwhelms you. But as soon as you turn to share it, you falter. Without a word, without a system of reference, how can it be communicated? To point and say “look” is not enough, because what the other sees they will inevitably construe in terms of the colours they already know.

Here, the gap between experience and meaning yawns open. The colour is there, yet its reality as a meaningful phenomenon is precarious. Without a name, without a place in the symbolic system, it hovers at the threshold between phenomenon and non-phenomenon.

The unnamed colour is not absent; it is inaccessible. It shows us that perception alone is not enough for meaning. To be meaningful, experience must be construed — folded into a system of differences that can be shared.

What this reveals:

Meaning does not reside in the rawness of perception but in the symbolic systems that allow perception to be integrated, recognised, and communicated. Without construal, even the most vivid encounter risks vanishing into silence.