Whole vs. Part

• The name "red" can encompass any of a wide range of colors, all found near the longest wavelengths visible to the human eye. Since wavelengths that are too long to be detected by the human eye are known as infrared, this name actually extends even further. Cerise, on the other hand, is a single color with only a few minor variations.
  
  

Primary Color vs. Shade

• Red is often used as a primary color, combined with two other colors in differing degrees to make a wide range of shades. Combined with blue and green, red is one of the three colors used to display images on cathode ray (CRT) screens. It also functions as a primary color in red, green, blue (RGB) printing and in the traditional red, yellow, blue model. The only major color standard that does not treat red as a primary color is cyan, magenta, yellow, key (CMYK). Cerise, however, is not a primary color in any known color model.
  
  

Differing Etymologies

• The name of the color red has a long etymological history---longer, in fact, than any other color. It is the only color that has a confirmed Proto-Indo-European root word, reconstructed as reudh. More directly, its name derives from the Old English word "read." Cherry, derived from the Anglo-French "cherise," is a more recent word, first appearing in the English language in the 13th century. The word "cerise" is even more recent. It is a modern French word that was first used in English in 1858.
  
  

Difference in Technical Definitions

• True red, as defined for Internet use by the W3C Consortium and used by the RBG and HSV standards, has a hex code of #FF0000, with RGB properties of 255, 0, 0. While cerise is fairly close, it is decidedly a different color, expressed hexidecimally as #DE3163 and with RGB values of 222, 49, 99.