'color-reactive' originates from modern English compounding, combining the noun 'color' (ultimately from Latin 'color', ‘hue’) and the adjective-forming element in 'reactive' (from 'react' < Latin 're-' ‘again, back’ + 'agere' ‘to do, drive’) with the suffix '-ive' ‘having the nature of’.

'color-reactive' arose in late 20th-century technical and commercial usage as a hyphenated modifier, modeled after patterns like 'heat-sensitive' and 'light-sensitive', built from existing English elements rather than borrowed wholesale from another language.

Initially, it meant ‘liable to react in a way involving color’, and it has come to emphasize two common uses: materials that change color upon stimulus and systems that develop a visible color as a reaction endpoint.