
When you think about the color purple, what comes to mind? Probably the movie The Color Purple. That makes sense.
Beyond that, you might think of Prince’s Purple Rain or maybe even Sheb Wooley’s 1958 hit The Purple People Eater. Not to be discounted, Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze probably outranks Wooley’s song on my popular purple song chart.
What do you get when you come to the intersection of “purple things” and grammar? You get “purple prose,” a style of overly ornate, elaborate language most often reserved for descriptions of intimate interactions in paperback romance novels and teenage love poems.
I’m sure you’re just dying for an example at this point, and I...