Green
Nature, growth, the sacred in Islam, envy, permission.
Core symbolic meanings
SynthesisGreen sits close to nature and growth in most samples, and Adams and Osgood (1973) found it evaluated as good across communities. But green also illustrates how strongly local context can redirect a color: in much of the English-speaking world green can mean envy or inexperience, while in Muslim-majority cultures green is among the most sacred colors. Jonauskaite and Mohr (2025) treat exactly this kind of split as evidence that color-emotion links, while broadly shared, are tuned by culture.
Cross-cultural variation
3+ cultures, citedGreen is the color of Paradise in the Qur'an, which describes the blessed in green garments of fine silk (18:31, 76:21) and reclining on green cushions (55:76). It became associated with the Prophet Muhammad and recurs in mosque decoration, manuscripts, and several national flags. Here green is not a neutral nature word but a religiously charged one. (Qur'an 18:31, 2024)
Green reads as nature and growth, but also as permission (a green light) and, in idiom, as envy or as inexperience ("green with envy," a "greenhorn"). The same hue carries a positive ecological sense and a faintly negative social one, depending on the phrase. (Adams & Osgood, 1973; Palmer & Schloss, 2010)
In the 30-nation dataset, green clustered with calm and with nature-linked feelings in most places, but the strength and exact emotional profile varied, again more by linguistic and geographic neighborhood than at random. (Jonauskaite et al., 2020)
Historical note
ContextGreen pigments were historically unstable and sometimes toxic, which limited their use in dress and art and gave green an uneasy material history in Europe even as it flourished as a sacred color in the Islamic world. The contrast is a clean example of the database's central point: the same hue can be precious in one tradition and troublesome in another, for reasons that are historical and material rather than perceptual.
Evidence type
How we knowMixed. Religious-textual background with named primary verses (Qur'an 18:31, 76:21, 55:76); quantitative affect and preference research (Adams and Osgood 1973; Jonauskaite et al. 2020; Palmer and Schloss 2010).
Survey data
Project instrumentRatings from the project's own fieldwork, The Color Testimony Project: recorded interviews with contributors of Chinese, Chinese-Canadian, and Chinese-American backgrounds, each rating this color on five 1-7 scales after the interview conversation. Values are small-sample descriptive means, shown with their full range; they are evidence of how these particular contributors read the color, not population estimates. Method, instrument, and cleaning notes: fieldwork.
In their words:
In the Toronto dance studios everyone wore black, white, and gray. Back in China I walked into a studio and everyone had pieces in every color. After that I started buying red pants, green pants, pink pants.Contributor CN-01, interview, summer 2026 (translated from the recording)
Every color is a positive color. It depends on how you read it and how you use it.Contributor CN-04, interview, summer 2026 (translated from the recording)
Quotes are cited by contributor code; the name log is private. Full profiles: the contributor roster.
Sources for this record
5 references- Qur'an 18:31, 76:21, 55:76 (green garments and cushions of Paradise); summarized via reference encyclopedia (2024). Green in Islam. Wikipedia (with primary Qur'anic citations and Dar al-Ifta sources). reference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_in_Islam - Adams, F. M., & Osgood, C. E. (1973). A Cross-Cultural Study of the Affective Meanings of Color. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 4(2), 135-156. peer reviewed
https://doi.org/10.1177/002202217300400201 - Jonauskaite, D., Abu-Akel, A., Dael, N., Oberfeld, D., Abdel-Khalek, A. M., Al-Rasheed, A. S., ... Mohr, C. (2020). Universal Patterns in Color-Emotion Associations Are Further Shaped by Linguistic and Geographic Proximity. Psychological Science 31(10), 1245-1260. peer reviewed
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620948810 - Jonauskaite, D., & Mohr, C. (2025). Do we feel colours? A systematic review of 128 years of psychological research linking colours and emotions. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 32(4), 1457-1486. peer reviewed
https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-024-02615-z - Palmer, S. E., & Schloss, K. B. (2010). An Ecological Valence Theory of Human Color Preference. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(19), 8877-8882. peer reviewed
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0906172107
Cite this record
Stable ID GCMD-003Chen, Chloe. “Green.” Record GCMD-003, Global Color Meaning Database (Suse), 2026. Accessed [date]. https://globalcolormeaning.org/entries/gcmd-003.html.
The identifier GCMD-003 is permanent: it does not change if the record text is revised. For an empirical number, also cite the underlying study listed below. See the how-to-cite page for full guidance.