ROYGBIV is an

acronym An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial Letter (alphabet), letter of each wor ...

for the sequence of hues commonly described as making up a rainbow: red, orange,

yellow Yellow is the color between green and orange on the spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a dominant wavelength of roughly 575585 nm. It is a primary color in subtractive color systems, used in painting or color printing. In t ...

green Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by a com ...

blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB color model, RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB color model, RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between Violet (color), violet and cyan on the optical spe ...

indigo InterGlobe Aviation Limited (d/b/a IndiGo), is an India, Indian airline headquartered in Gurgaon, Haryana, India. It is the largest List of airlines of India, airline in India by passengers carried and fleet size, with a 64.1% domestic market ...

, and violet. There are several

mnemonic A mnemonic device ( ), memory trick or memory device is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval in the human memory, often by associating the information with something that is easier to remember. It makes use of e ...

s that can be used for remembering this color sequence, such as the name "Roy G. Biv" or sentences such as " Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain". The battle is the Battle of Wakefield in 1460 which killed him.

History

In the Renaissance, several artists tried to establish a sequence of up to seven primary colors from which all other colors could be mixed. In line with this artistic tradition,

Sir Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton () was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed. His book (''Mathe ...

divided his color circle, which he constructed to explain additive color mixing, into seven colors. Originally he used only five colors, but later he added orange and indigo to match the number of musical notes in the major scale. The Munsell color system, the first formal color notation system (1905), names only five "principal hues": red,

, and purple.

Mnemonics

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton () was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment that followed ...

's color sequence (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) is kept alive today by several popular

s. One is simply the nonsense word ''roygbiv'', which is an acronym for the seven colors. This word can also be envisioned as a person's name, "Roy G. Biv". Another traditional mnemonic device has been to turn the initial letters of the seven spectral colors into a sentence, most commonly "Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain" (or the slight alternative "Richard Of York Gained Battles In Vain"). This mnemonic is said to refer to the defeat and death of Richard, Duke of York at the Battle of Wakefield in 1460, or to his son

Richard III Richard III (2 October 1452 – 22 August 1485) was King of England from 26 June 1483 until his death in 1485. He was the last king of the Plantagenet dynasty and its cadet branch the House of York. His defeat and death at the Battle of Boswor ...

being defeated at the

battle of Bosworth Field The Battle of Bosworth or Bosworth Field ( ) was the last significant battle of the Wars of the Roses, the civil war between the houses of House of Lancaster, Lancaster and House of York, York that extended across England in the latter half ...

in 1485. Another sentence sometimes used is "Read Out Your Good Book In Verse", referring to the

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

In popular culture

The mnemonic sentence "Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain", mentioned above, also appears in the 2003 novel '' Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code'', third book of the ''Artemis Fowl'' series. The song " Roygbiv" by Scottish electronic band Boards of Canada is named for the mnemonic.

References

{{color topics Optical spectrum Mnemonics