Clean Gust Teal

Old English clǣne, pure, free of dirt — used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues that read as crisp and uncontaminated by other pigments. Clean white, clean blue: moderate saturation combined with optical clarity. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside clear and true.

Old Norse gustr, sudden-burst-of-wind. As a color modifier, gust implies a sudden-burst-and-cliff-top-and-driven quality, the visual register of Cornish-cliff-and-Hebridean-gust hand-sudden-burst-and-cliff-top-and-driven Cornish-cliff-and-Hebridean-gust-and-North-Atlantic-front gust-and-sudden-burst-and-cliff-top surfaces under Cornish-cliff-and-Hebridean-gust-and-North-Atlantic-front Lizard-Point-and-Outer-Hebrides-and-Faroe-passage cliff-top-wind-light. Sits at the modifier-and-weather end of the grid, parallel to zephyr and mistral 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.