Cerise is a bright pinkish-red colour — the colour of a ripe cherry, but a little more pink than a dark blood-red. Designers, fashion writers, and paint charts use the word; most people just say bright pink or cherry-red. It can name the colour (“a dress in cerise”) or describe a thing (“cerise lipstick”). English borrowed it from French in the 1800s, when French colour names felt stylish. Though actually, it is the same old fruit-word as cherry, come in again by a later door. You would not use it to order fruit at a stall.