In this chapter we summarise accounts of the symbolic associations of colour words with other domains, which give rise to figurative, metaphorical meaning extensions. There are three broad categories: accounts of the social and cultural history of colour and of particular colours; accounts from theoretical and descriptive linguistics and from cognitive psychology; and accounts dealing specifically with relationships between colours and affective states, divided into corpus-based work and informant-based surveys. Although different cultures may have different associations with some colours, there is considerable agreement on the ones in English-speaking and other European contexts, and it is with these associations that we are concerned here.