What color is aubergine?

Aubergine is a dark reddish purple color. The color name is derived from the appearance of typical supermarket eggplants. In British English and French, the word aubergine is the common term for an eggplant.

Aubergine has been used as a color term for deep purple since 1895. Unlike the color orange, which refers to a fruit that is consistently orange when ripe, the vegetable aubergine ranges from white to scarlet in coloration, and may even have stripes. In fact, the name eggplant itself comes from the white, egg-like appearance of early domesticated eggplants. These vegetables, which resemble goose eggs, were later supplanted by the longer, pear-shaped purple variety more commonly seen today.