Abstract
The article overviews the names for colours (red, yellow, green) used in traffic lights, which during the COVID-19 pandemic have acquired several new secondary meanings that general dictionaries do not contain, to differentiate: 1) restrictions of various severity to prevent the spreading of the disease (e.g. red restrictions or looser yellow restrictions), 2) areas with different risk levels of catching COVID-19 (e.g. the yellow list countries, the COVID-unsafe ‘yellow’ and ‘red’ list countries, the ‘green’ wave), 3) different safety levels of activities (e.g. ‘red’ environment, ‘yellow’ or ‘partly safe’ area or the so-called yellow activities, ‘green format’). Besides excerpts from the Internet in Latvian (material from public institutions, mass media portals (articles and commentaries), forums, and social networks), examples from other languages (Russian, German) with similar meanings and their explanations are included that are available in Corona-lexis related vocabularies, i.e. online databases. The descriptive method and partly also the comparative method are used. The work aimed to gather, classify and analyse the uses of specific colour names as attributes in concord, and to explain their new meanings. It led to the conclusion that to designate the new realia, secondary meanings to the universal symbolic meanings of the red and green colours are derived, e.g. green – safe, it is allowed; red – alarm, indicates danger, prohibition. However, the new meanings of the yellow colour are associated with the intermediate position between red and green (like in traffic lights): looser restrictions, partial safety, and moderate morbidity. As the described meanings of colour names are fairly new in the language, it is difficult to decide on their inclusion in general dictionaries (Thesaurus, Dictionary of Contemporary Latvian Language (MLVV)). Nevertheless, they should be included in a COVID-lexis glossary, if any will be compiled.
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