Colour is a key component in the successful dissemination of information. Since many real-world concepts are associated with colour, for example danger with red, linguistic information is often complemented with the use of appropriate colours in information visualization and product marketing. Yet, there is no comprehensive resource that captures concept-colour associations. We present a method to create a large word-colour association lexicon by crowdsourcing. A word-choice question was used to obtain sense-level annotations and to ensure data quality. We focus especially on abstract concepts and emotions to show that even they tend to have strong colour associations. Thus, using the right colours can not only improve semantic coherence, but also inspire the desired emotional response.
This paper describes a computerised database of psycholinguistic information. Semantic, syntactic, phonological and orthographic information about some or all of the 98,538 words in the database is accessible, by using a specially-written and very simple programming language. Word-association data are also included in the database. Some examples are given of the use of the database for selection of stimuli to be used in psycholinguistic experimentation or linguistic research.