Warm Cygnus Teal

Old English wearm, of moderate heat — used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues that read as containing red, orange, or yellow undertones. Warm gray, warm white: not necessarily a temperature, but the optical impression of a slight red-orange shift. Sits across the crisp and neutral buckets.

Latin cygnus, swan. As a color modifier, cygnus implies a swan-flying-and-Northern-Cross quality, the visual register of Cygnus-Swan-and-Northern-Cross hand-swan-flying-and-Northern-Cross Cygnus-Swan-and-Northern-Cross-and-Bortle-1-sky cygnus-and-swan-flying-and-Northern-Cross surfaces under Cygnus-Swan-and-Northern-Cross-and-Bortle-1-sky August-and-September-late-summer-zenith Milky-Way-stellar-light. Sits at the modifier-and-cosmic end of the grid, parallel to deneb and lyra 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.