Around the corner at Language Log Victor Mair quotes from a recent paper, E.J.W. Barber, "Of Salt Men and Cloth: The Remarkable Textile History Preserved in Eurasian Salt-beds," Sino-Platonic Papers, No. 345, My 2024.
Sinologists have long wondered why the words for “blue” and “cabbage” in Chinese are homonyms: both 藍 lán in Mandarin. But just recently, perusing dye information about woad [VHM: a common plant dye for blue] from Richard ...