Sturdy Advent Royal

Old French estourdi, stunned, reckless — drifted in English to mean robust, well-built. Used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as durable and unfussy — the working browns of saddle leather, the working greens of pasture wool. Sits in the bold-and-warm corner alongside robust and solid.

Latin adventus, arrival. As a color modifier, advent implies a December-Pre-Christmas-and-purple quality, the visual register of Roman-Catholic-and-Anglican Advent-period purple-and-pink-vestment-and-wreath-and-candle liturgical surfaces under Advent-period candlelit-purple-and-pink ecclesiastical light. Sits at the modifier-and-time end of the grid, parallel to yule and easter in usage.

The blue of European royal court dress and regalia from the late seventeenth century forward — the color of British peers' robes, French royal sashes, the lining of the crown-jewel cases. The color refers to a saturated, slightly violet-shifted blue with the matte finish of velvet or melton wool dyed to maximum intensity: deeper than cornflower, warmer than ultramarine, with the heraldic weight of a color reserved for monarchs and the official Crown.