Roots
Colours of collar
Deepti

The word ‘collar’ owes its origin to the Latin root collare, which means ‘band for the neck’ and that comes from the Latin word collum or ‘neck’. Today, the word ‘collar’ is not just a band of material around the neck; rather, it has taken on more connotations. It can be used for the restraining band around the neck of an animal as in ‘dog collar’. Machinery or piping can also make use of a ‘collar’ as a restraint or connection. In the world of food, it refers to the cut of bacon taken from the pig’s neck. Plants can also own a collar in the form of the area where the stem joins the roots. And, last but not the least, if you seize, accost or apprehend someone, you are ‘collaring’ them.

Just as the collar has taken on so many forms, the traditional blue, white and pink collar has changed colour in different ways. The world’s preoccupation with money has created black-collar jobs that pertain to employment in the black market, illicit trade or untaxed goods and services. The grey-collar refers to professions that combine elements of the blue and white-collar jobs. These grey-collar professionals are those people who do not put in significant manual labour and yet are not purely white collar, as, for instance, skilled technicians.

The Internet has combined the colour of the scarlet woman and the pink collar of the working woman to create the ‘scarlet-collar’. The scarlet collar refers to the women who earn from the Internet sex industry. When work is done from home on flexi-time, it is termed ‘open-collar’. The world’s concern for the environment stands reflected in the category of ‘green-collar’ professions. These contribute towards the preservation of the environment, as, for example, the people who work in the recycling industry who are ‘more’ green collar than those who manufacture paper.

Just as the economy, society and people change fast today; similarly the border around these collars keeps changing. So, words like ‘more’ and ‘less’ are used often with these collars, to keep in pace.