Steady Domus Teal

Old English stede, place, position — drifted to mean firm and unmoving. Used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as reliable rather than dramatic. Steady gray, steady green: moderate saturation combined with optical calmness. Sits in the crisp-bucket center alongside settled.

Latin domus, house-or-home. As a color modifier, domus implies a Latin-house-and-Roman-domus-and-atrium quality, the visual register of Pompeian-domus-and-Roman-atrium hand-Latin-house-and-Roman-domus-and-atrium Pompeian-domus-and-Roman-atrium-and-impluvium domus-and-Latin-house surfaces under Pompeian-domus-and-Roman-atrium-and-impluvium Pompeian-and-Herculaneum-domus Roman-villa-light. Sits at the modifier-and-Latin end of the grid, parallel to arbor and via 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.