I read $_ as "the thing" or "it". How do you read $_?

The original poster wanted this:

if ($color eq "blue || $color eq "red" || $color eq "green")
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My second post essentially stated ...

if ($color eq $_)
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... and dynamically replaced $_ with "blue", "red", or "green". Thus to me, $_ eq $color is like stating ...

if ("blue eq $color || "red" eq $color || "green" eq $color)
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... which isn't intuitive.

-Matt