The story
- Latin · derived frommalva
- French · borrowed frommauve“mallow”
- English todaymauve
Borrowed from French mauve (“mallow”), from Latin malva, which has a purple colour. Doublet of mallow. Coined in 1856 by the chemist William Henry Perkin, when he accidentally created the first aniline dye.
Words from the same roots
Latinmalva all →
mallowmalvinmalvaceous
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.