Modest Rain Teal

Latin modestus, moderate — used as a color modifier since the sixteenth century for hues that read as understated and unwilling to claim more visual space than they need. Modest taupe, modest beige: moderate-to-low saturation combined with optical restraint. Sits at the crisp-and-quiet edge of the grid alongside quiet and plain.

Old English regn, rain-or-shower. As a color modifier, rain implies a rain-shower-and-wet-and-Atlantic-front quality, the visual register of Atlantic-front-rain-and-monsoon-rain hand-rain-shower-and-wet-and-Atlantic-front Atlantic-front-rain-and-monsoon-rain-and-Lake-District-deluge rain-and-rain-shower-and-wet surfaces under Atlantic-front-rain-and-monsoon-rain-and-Lake-District-deluge Cumbrian-fells-and-Borrowdale-and-Snowdonia Atlantic-rain-light. Sits at the modifier-and-weather end of the grid, parallel to sleet and flurry 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.