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That's an arbitrary, abstract shape. Combined with a near-universal colour association of red for stop/end/abort. It doesn't need an origin. If stop signs show
by sjwright 10y ago
That's an arbitrary, abstract shape. Combined with a near-universal colour association of red for stop/end/abort. It doesn't need an origin.
If stop signs showed the picture of the brake lever from a Ford Model T, you'd have a point.
- emodendroket 10y agoYeah, but why are red/yellow/green "universal" colors for driving? I don't think it's because of some innate human love for those particular meanings of the colors. In fact, I'd bet that in a society without cars the red octagon would not be so "universally" understood to mean "stop."
- sjwright 10y agoBasic colour meanings of red and green transcend many genres of human existence, from business (using a red pen, or being "in the red") to entire gamuts of electronics and engineering, red warning stickers, etc. I agree that the octagon is arbitrary. But that's beside the point, because it's self-evidently arbitrary. Nobody assumes there must be a deeper meaning behind a basic shape. The iconography of a floppy disk is not a basic shape.