Lilac takes its name from the shrub Syringa vulgaris — introduced to Western Europe from Persia and the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. The French word "lilas" comes from the Arabic "lilak." Lilac became a favourite garden plant in the 17th–19th centuries, and its distinctive pale purple-pink became associated with spring, romance, and mild melancholy.

Nostalgic, tender, and slightly melancholic. Lilac is associated with spring and memory — it is the colour of things remembered rather than things present. Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" (1865) — his elegy for Lincoln — established lilac as the colour of beautiful mourning in American poetry. Gentle and slightly faded, it carries the quality of love that has aged into something quieter.

In the Victorian "language of flowers" (floriography), lilac symbolised the first emotions of love — a colour for early infatuation before the deeper commitments of red rose. Walt Whitman's use of lilac in his Lincoln elegy created a lasting association between the colour-flower and beautiful grief. Proust's detailed descriptions of lilac in "In Search of Lost Time" contributed to its literary association with involuntary memory.