French tricolour flag, the
"Tricolore"
A
tricolour or
tricolor (three
colours) is a
flag or
banner more-or-less equally divided (horizontally,
vertically, or, less frequently, diagonally) into three bands of
differing
colors. The term is somewhat
misleading, as many tricolours have
more than three
colors, as they are often
charged
with contrasting emblems (the
flag of
India as a prominent example).
Besides carrying an emblem, another means by which a tricolour may
have more than three colours is through the use of
fimbriation: the separation of colours on a flag
by a narrow contrasting stripe. In a
fimbriated
tricolour, the three broad bands are separated by two thin
stripes on either side of the central band. Flags of this type
include the flags of
Uzbekistan,
Kenya,
North Korea, and
Gambia.
One of the
first tricolours and the oldest tricolour still in use today is the
flag of the Netherlands
; one of the first vertical tricolours is the
tricolore of France
.
Variety of triband
The tricolour is a specific type of
triband. In a triband, the design is of three
vertical, horizontal, or diagonal stripes, often formed—from an
heraldic point of view—by the placement of a vertical or horizontal
stripe (a
pale or a
fess, respectively), over a background. The triband may
thus have two stripes of the same colour split by a stripe of a
second colour (examples of this include the flags of
Austria,
Canada, and
Spain).
In a tricolour, the two outer stripes are of different colours.
They can thus be seen as a subset of tribands.
Additional meanings
Vexillologists also occasionally
describe flags of which the main element is three stripes as being
"based on a tricolour (or triband) design". Flags such as the
flag of the Bahamas and the
Palestinian flag fall into this
category.
Some vexillologists take the meaning of the term at its barest, and
simply use it to describe any flag containing just three colours,
irrespective of the design. Thus, the flags of the
United States and the
United Kingdom might be described
as tricolours, while the flag of India (which has a blue charge in
the centre) would not.
Examples
See also
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