Kanye West and adidas Originals’ YEEZY releases have been coming hard and fast in recent months. June alone brought with it seven releases, most notably the geo-locked “Antlia” and “Antlia Reflective” YEEZY Boost 350 V2s, as well as the “Tephra” YEEZY Boost 700 V2. But what the hell is an “antlia” or a “tephra”?
Those who have been keeping tabs on West’s work with adidas since 2015 might have noticed that the names of YEEZY colorways have been getting increasingly obscure. Gone are the days of “Light Brown” or “Pirate Black” colorways. Nowadays, it feels like every second YEEZY is named at random. Although, knowing West, that is almost certainly not the case.
We’ve picked out some of the more cryptic YEEZY colorway names to find out what they actually mean. Scroll on to discover what words like "Vanta," "Peyote," and "Wakame" mean, as well as how to pronounce them.
Antlia [ant-lee-ah]
1. noun. A constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere. It means "pump" in Latin. The constellation is so named because it was said to resemble an air pump.
Vanta [vanh-tah]
1. noun. Most likely a reference to Vantablack, a material developed by Surrey NanoSystems in the UK and one of the darkest substances known. It absorbs up to 99.96 percent of visible light.
Tephra [teff-ra]
1. noun. A rock fragment or particle ejected by a volcanic eruption.
Inertia [in-er-sha]
1. noun. A tendency to do nothing or remain unchanged.
2. noun. A property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line.
Geode [jee-ode]
1. noun. A small cavity in rock lined with crystals or other mineral matter.
Mauve [mow-v]
1. noun. A pale purple color. It was also the pale purple aniline dye prepared by William H. Perkin in 1856, making it the first synthetic dyestuff.
Synth [sin-th]
1. noun. Short for synthesizer, an electronic musical instrument (typically operated by a keyboard) that produces a wide variety of sounds by generating and combining signals of different frequencies.
Analog [an-ah-log]
1. adjective. Relating to or using signals or information represented by a continuously variable physical quantity such as spatial position, voltage, etc.
1. noun. A person or thing seen as comparable to another.
Lundmark [lund-marck]
1. noun. An eroded crater on the far side of the Moon. It lies to the southwest of the Mare Ingenii, one of the rare mare areas on the far side.
Hyperspace [hi-per-spay-s]
1. noun. A space of more than three dimensions. In science fiction, it is a space-time continuum in which it is possible to travel faster than light.
Beluga [beh-loo-gah]
1. noun. A small white-toothed whale, living in herds mainly in Arctic coastal waters.
1. adjective. A color named after the color of the whale.
Moonrock [moo-n-roh-k]
1. noun. A piece of rock found on the moon.
2. noun. A relatively strong strain of cannabis.
Turtle Dove [turr-tell-duh-v]
1. noun. A small Old World dove with a soft purring call, noted for the apparent affection shown for its mate.
Graphite [graff-fyt]
1. noun. A gray crystalline allotropic form of carbon which occurs as a mineral in some rocks and can be made from coke.
Taupe [taw-p]
1. adjective. A gray with a tinge of brown.
Cinder [sin-derr]
1. noun. A small piece of partly burnt coal or wood that has stopped giving off flames but still has combustible matter in it.
Onyx Shade [ohn-nix]
1. adjective. Onyx is a semiprecious variety of agate with different colors in layers.
Wakame [wah-kah-may]
1. noun. An edible brown seaweed used, typically in dried form, in Chinese and Japanese cooking.
Burnt Sienna [burr-n-t see-enn-ah]
1. noun. Sienna is a kind of ferruginous earth used as a pigment in painting, normally yellowish-brown in color (raw sienna) or deep reddish-brown when roasted (burnt sienna).
Peyote [pay-oh-tee]
1. noun. A small soft blue-green spineless cactus, native to Mexico and the southern US. Also called mescal.
2. noun. A hallucinogenic drug prepared from the peyote cactus, containing mescaline.
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