Frank Glazed Teal

From the Old French franc, free, sincere — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as direct and unhedged. Frank red, frank brown: moderate-to-high saturation combined with optical directness. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside direct and honest.

Old English glæs, glass. As a color modifier, glazed implies a fired-pottery-glaze-and-glass-coating quality, the visual register of Stoke-on-Trent-and-Italian-Maiolica-glazed hand-applied-and-fired ceramic-and-pottery-and-tile-glaze Stoke-on-Trent-and-Italian-Maiolica glazed-pottery surfaces under Stoke-on-Trent-and-Italian-Maiolica hand-glazed pottery-and-tile workshop-light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to gloss and enameled 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.