A colour microsystem with an Indo-European root *g l: g l

Studying of colour lexemes in a diachronic system allows to expose the main stages and peculiarities of their evolution: all colour names develop syncretic meanings in language history; colour syncrets disintegrate and meanings picked out of them are actualized differently in cognate languages; colour lexemes develop estimation meanings of polar character; historical polysemy determines valency of words with colour meaning.