The current Phi Psi colors were officially adopted by the 1920 GAC as "deep red" and "dark green". The Executive Council of that year specified "cardinal red" and "hunter green".

Cardinal Red 

Cardinal red gets its name from the cassocks worn by cardinals. (The family of birds takes its name from the color.) Cardinal is the official color of Stanford University along with many other colleges and other organizations.

Cardinal red is defined as "a color like that of a cardinal's cassock, hat, etc.; a bright red, darker than scarlet, and between scarlet and crimson." (This definition is from Dictionary.com,  Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc., accessed June 30, 2008.)

The specification for this color  mentioned in The Manual of Phi Kappa Psi  is Pantone Matching System (PMS) color 200, which is collaborated by other sources, and this specification is the basis of the computer red-green-blue, or RGB,  values used here.

The RGB (normalized 0-to-255) values used for this color on this website are
          186, 18, and 43 in decimal, or
          BA, 12, and 2B in hexadecimal, or  #BA122B as a hex triplet.
These correspond, per MS Windows, to a hue of 234 (close to computer red, 255), a saturation of 198 (18% white, 82%  color), and a luminance of 96 (75% of max possible color) ,

ALTERNATE SPECIFICATIONS

(Click to enlarge.)

EXAMPLES

The following collage, found on the web in 2008, shows cardinal priests, cardinal finches, and some shirts and a throw that were all labeled as being "cardinal red" color.

Hunter Green  

Hunter Green  is a dark green that is a representation of the color worn by hunters in the 19th century. (The first recorded use of hunter green as a color name in English was in 1892. Most hunters began wearing the color olive drab instead of hunter green about the beginning of the 20th century, per Wickipedia.)

Hunter green is defined as "a dark green color of yellowish cast. Also called hunter's green or hunter." [This definition is from Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hunter green (accessed: June 29, 2008)].

The specification for this color  mentioned in The Manual of Phi Kappa Psi  is Pantone Matching System (PMS) color  342, which is not collaborated by other sources, being too bright and a little too blue, more like a forest green, and is therefore not the basis of the computer red-green-blue, or RGB,  values used here.

Specifications based upon antique books of color names with color samples are the basis for the RGB values used on this website. The RGB values used for this color on this website are
          53, 94, and 59 in decimal, or
          35, 5E, and 3B in hexadecimal, or  #355E3B as a hex triplet.)
This corresponds to hue of 91 (close to computer green, 85), a saturation of 71 (72% white, 28% color, in other words a very muted, or grayish, green), and a luminance of 74 (about 77% as bright as the cardinal red).

There evidently is no Pantone color very close to this; PMS 371 is another option, judging from computer color samples, but it may be a little too yellow.. The RGB values used for this color are
          79, 97 and 28 in decimal, or
          4A, 61, and 1C in hexadecimal, or  #4A611C as a hex triplet.)

ALTERNATE SPECIFICATIONS

(Click to enlarge.)

EXAMPLES

The items in the following collage, found on the web in 2008, were all labeled as being "hunter green" color.

Atypical, brighter and/or more saturated colors were the following: