We interrupt your daily newsfeed with this message brought to you by purple, which traveled all the way from ancient times to become the color of 2018.

The Pantone Color Institute, which helps makers of products select color for designs, announced this week that it chose to paint the coming year Ultra Violet, a purple-highlighter shade.

So why purple?

It’s “the most complex of all colors,” Leatrice Eiseman, the institute’s executive director, told The New York Times in an article in the Fashion and Style section published Thursday. “Because it takes two shades that are seemingly diametrically opposed — blue and red — and brings them together to create something new.”

The word Ms. Eiseman used in her description of purple, “complex,” shares a root with “complicit,” which Dictionary.com selected as the word of the year for 2017. But where “complicit” has dark undertones, “complex” promises hope with its mysteriousness. We may welcome that after a year steeped in uncovering sexual-harassment complicity.