An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics

In the → standard model of particle physics, a property possessed by → quarks and → gluons that determine rules for how these particles may interact in the context of → quantum chromodynamics.

Color charge is analogous to electromagnetic charge, but it comes in three types rather than two, which results in a different type of force, the → strong interaction.
There are three pairs of colors and anti-colors, named red (anti-red), green (anti-green), and blue (anti-blue). The terminology has nothing to do with visible color. It is only a word that is used to designate three independent types of the strong charge characteristic.

See also: → color; → charge.