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Cochineal is a deep red that people put in food, drink, sweets, and sometimes make-up, to make them look red or pink. It is not a plant dye. It comes from tiny scale insects that live on ; people dry the insects and crush them, and a warm scarlet comes out. On a packet you may see it listed as a food colour, or under the older shop name carmine. Some makers like it because it is “natural” and the red is strong; other people will not eat it, because it comes from insects, and a few people can have a bad reaction to it. It is an old colour — used long before the bright reds made in factories — and it is still chosen when someone wants a red that looks as if it came from nature, though actually the nature in question is an insect, not a berry.
胭脂蟲紅（食品標示上常見；也有人叫胭脂紅）
組成English does not split this word into pieces you can hear. It was borrowed from French cochenille, and that came from Italian cocciniglia or Spanish cochinilla. The next step is uncertain; it may go back to Latin for “scarlet-dyed”, sitting on a Greek word for a scarlet dye made from insects on oak. The idea underneath is scarlet, not chicken — even though the English spelling looks a little like cock.
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
cochinealnoun/ˌkɒt͡ʃɪˈniːl/
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A scale insect of the species Dactylopius coccus, native to the tropical and subtropical Americas, which lives on prickly pear cacti (genus Opuntia).
- The Cochineel is an Inſect, bred in a ſort of Fruit much like the Prickle Pear. […] The Silveſter gives a colour almoſt as fair as the Cochineel; and ſo like it as to be often miſtaken for it, but it is not near ſo valuable.
- A prodigious quantity of insects of all sorts (but no mosquitoes) assailed us at our evening meal. […] There were some that were larger—earwigs, cochineals, a little mole-cricket, and an enormous mantis. I stuffed a number of them into my poison-bottle.
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A vivid red dye made from the dried bodies of cochineal insects.
- Or if you can finde the berrie of Cochenile with whiche wee colour Stammelles, or any Roote, Berrie, Fruite, wood or earth fitte for dying, you winne a notable thing fitt for our ſtate of clothing. This Cochenile is naturall in the west Indies on that firme.
- Cociniglia, a kinde of rich flie or graine comming out of India to dye ſcarlet vvith, called Cutchenele.
- 3
The vivid red colour of this dye.
- And I to make all knovv, I am not ſhallovv / VVill have my points [i.e., lace] of Cucchineale and yellovv.
- These days, I'm an apprentice at a tattoo shop on Sunset. […] I just keep staring at all the ink we have, that wild variety of color, everything from rootbeer, midnight blue and cochineal to mauve, light doe, lilac, south sea green, maize, even pelican black, all lined up in these plastic caps, […]
cochinealadj/ˌkɒt͡ʃɪˈniːl/
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Possessing a vivid red colour, as or as if produced from dyeing with cochineal dye (noun sense 2).
- Batavus [a tulip variety], of somewhat the same shade, was slightly taller, and perhaps with a little more cochineal color.
- The principal imports arriving by sea, then as previously, were textiles, among them coarse cotton cloth, known as Surat, the Indian port from which they were shipped, as well as blue cotton cloth and cochineal cloth called kemis, fine cloth from various parts of India, coarse white cotton cloth, and unspun cotton in balls from Yaman.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。