pink [M16th] The use of pink for the colour beloved by little girls comes from the name of the dianthus flower, rather than the other way round. Similarly, several other languages use the *rose as their source for the colour, and since the early 20th century fuchsia [M18th] (named after the 16th-century German botanist Leonhart Fuchs) has been used for a distinctive shade of deep pink. Shakespeare uses the pink flower to signify the supreme example of something in Romeo and Juliet: ‘I am the very pink of courtesy.’ Here he was probably making a pun on the expression the flower of, meaning ‘the finest part or example’. This Shakespearean phrase led to the development of the expression in the pink of condition, which by the early 18th century was shortened to simply in the pink ‘in very good health and spirits’. The plant name appeared in the mid 16th century, but its origin is not known for certain. It may be short for pink eye ‘small or half-shut eye’, which would make the name like its French equivalent oeillet, which means ‘little eye’, or it may come from ‘to pink’ meaning to decorate with slashes or scalloped edges to show a contrasting lining (still found in the dressmaker’s pinking shears), in which case the name refers to the ragged edges of the petals. Pink in the sense of the sort of sound an engine makes when cooling dates only from the early 20th century and imitates the sound.