Level Ruff Teal

Latin libella, small-balance / level-tool — sharing root with libra (balance). As a color modifier, level implies a clear-and-horizontal-true quality where the hue carries the visual register of gravity-perpendicular-and-perfectly-horizontal surface. Sits at the crisp-and-balanced end of the grid, parallel to plumb and flat in usage.

Old English ruffe, Elizabethan-pleated-collar. As a color modifier, ruff implies a starched-and-Elizabethan-pleated-collar quality, the visual register of Elizabethan-and-Spanish-Habsburg-ruff hand-starched-and-Elizabethan-pleated-collar Elizabethan-and-Spanish-Habsburg-ruff-and-Holbein-portrait ruff-and-starched-and-Elizabethan-pleated-collar surfaces under Elizabethan-and-Spanish-Habsburg-ruff-and-Holbein-portrait Tudor-and-Spanish-Habsburg-court starched-collar-light. Sits at the modifier-and-textile end of the grid, parallel to gown and frock in usage.

Anas crecca, the small dabbling duck whose male in breeding plumage sports a chestnut head crossed by a glossy green-blue stripe. The color refers to that stripe — the iridescent panel just behind the eye: a saturated, slightly muted blue-green with the optical depth of structural color rather than pigment. Cooler than cypress, warmer than cerulean, with the ornithological specificity of a color named for one feather of one bird.