9. WHY A GREEN-EYED MONSTER?

The most common of all green’s negative associations is thanks to William Shakespeare. For more than 400 years green has been the colour of envy and jealousy, at least in the English-speaking world — the French prefer yellow, the Chinese red, the Japanese purple, the Finns black. It starts with Othello, written in 1603. The villain, Iago, plots to make Othello jealous of his wife, Desdemona, and warns him: “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on.”