Bananas and lemons, buttercups and sunshine, a happy colour ... or so I thought ...

In symbolism it indicates jealousy, inconstancy, adultery, perfidy, and cowardice.

In Egypt and Burma, yellow signifies mourning.

In Spain, executioners once wore yellow.

In 10th century France, the doors of traitors and criminels were painted yellow.

Yellow has good visibility and is often used as a colour of warning.  It is also a symbol for quarantine, an area marked off because of danger.

In the Middle Ages, actors portraying the dead in a play wore yellow.

"Yellow journalism" refers to irresponsible and alarmist reporting, scare headlines and sensational articles.

If someone says you are "yellow" or that you have "a yellow streak", then you are a coward.  You could even be said to be "yellow-livered" as there was a superstition that a coward's liver contained no blood.

If you are shown "the yellow card" you are given a warning. The expression derives from football where the referee can show a player a yellow card when he has committed an offence.

"Yellow Books" are official documents, Government reports in France, corresponding to British "blue books", so called from the colour of their covers.

"Yellow fever" - name given to the gold-prospecting mania in Australia in the colonial days.

"The Yellow Peril" was a scare that the yellow races of China and Japan would rapidly increase in population and overrun the territories occupied by the white races with fearful consequences. (originated in Germany at the end of the 19th century)

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