[Delacon]

Does anyone know the historical significance of mauve? Or what it actually is?

[Swordmaker]

Does anyone know the historical significance of mauve? Or what it actually is?

From Google:

Both of these, apparently, are mauve. Maybe women and interior decorators might know why they are different... I sure don't.

From the Oxford American Dictionary:

mauve |mōv; môv|
adjective
of a pale purple color.
noun
1 a pale purple color : a few pale streaks of mauve were all that remained of the sunset | glowing with soft pastel mauves and pinks.
2 historical a bright but delicate pale purple aniline dye prepared by William H. Perkin (1838–1907) in 1856. It was the first synthetic dyestuff.

ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: from French, literally ‘mallow,’ from Latin malva.

mallow |ˈmalō|
noun
a herbaceous plant with hairy stems, pink or purple flowers, and disk-shaped fruit. Several kinds are grown as ornamentals, and some are edible. • Genus Malva, family Malvaceae (the mallow family): many species. This family also includes the hollyhocks, hibiscus, and abutilon. See also marsh mallow , rose mallow .

is that enough?

[bustinchops]

I think mauve is simply the name of a purplish gray color with no other significance. I do know that purple was a color reserved for or obtainable only by royalty starting several thousand years ago because it was such a costly dye to make, so maybe mauve was sort of a watered-down, poor man’s purple.