It seems like "puce" means two different colors depending on where you live. I always thought puce was green, then saw on Wikipedia that it is purplish-brown. Further research tells me that it's generally regarded as purplish-brown in the United States, whereas Europeans think of intense shades of green when they hear the word. (The etymology relates to fleas, and the color of their blood-stained droppings.)
So, why do people think of it it so radically differently, and wherever did the concept of green come into the word puce?
Wikipedia: Puce
On the difference in interpretation:
Yahoo: What does the color puce look like? I never heard of it until just now.
Peggy Oberlin Interiors: Puce , Puse , Peuse , Peuce – Let’s Boycott This Color!!!!
Best Answer
I found an interesting grammarian blog on this very topic. Essentially, the post avers that puce is dark purple, but acknowledges the false notion of a "puce green" still persists. (It's theorized that the term might be an adaptation of puke green, but also readily acknowledged that there's no strong evidence to prove that notion.)
Also, I found a dress on Ebay today that was described thusly:
I suppose that would mean the dress in question is puce-on-puce?
Lastly, I typed "Puce dress" into Google's search engine, and then clicked Shopping; this is what showed up on my screen:
The conspicuously un-puce dress in the middle is being sold as used, so it might disappear from the search query results in a few days. However, it does present some tangible evidence that some people indeed mistakenly refer to pea soup green as puce green.
As for why such misperceptions persist and become widespread, it only takes one exposure to misinformation to lock it into one's brain. This reminds me of a friend who once related how, while working on a project in his garage, he playfully asked his daughter to fetch him a "sawdonkey", making what he assumed was an obviously humorous pun on the word "sawhorse". Problem was, his young daughter didn't know what that object was called, so she simply noted the reference, and tucked it into her brain. Several years later, she was working on a stage crew in college, and it took five or six people to convince her that the object in question was indeed called a sawhorse, not a sawdonkey – she even called her dad that night to verify.