Word History: It may seem surprising that English lurid, which sometimes means “vivid,” comes from Latin lūridus, “pale, sallow, sickly yellow,” used to describe the color of things like skin or teeth. Latin lūridus could also describe horrifying or ghastly things like poisonous herbs or even death itself—things that make a person turn pale. In an account of the volcanic eruption that buried the city of Pompeii, the Roman writer Pliny the Younger used lūridus to describe the unsettling color of the sun shining through a cloud of ash. When lurid first appeared in English in the mid-1600s, it described things that are pale in a sickly or disturbing way. Lurid was also used of gray, overcast skies. In the 1700s, writers began to use lurid to describe the red glow of fire blazing dimly within smoke. In the 1800s, the word acquired an additional meaning, the one it most commonly has today when we reveal the lurid details of a horrifying or sensationalistic story.