Sterile Icicle Teal

Latin sterilis, barren / not-fertile — sharing root with Greek steiros (barren). As a color modifier, sterile implies a clear-and-medical-clean-and-stripped quality, the crisp color of operating-theater surgical-environment white-and-stainless-steel surfaces. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to sanitary and hygienic in usage.

Old English īsgicel, ice-and-icicle. As a color modifier, icicle implies a hanging-ice-and-eaves-frozen-drip quality, the visual register of Alpine-eaves-and-Norwegian-stave-icicle hand-hanging-ice-and-eaves-frozen-drip Alpine-eaves-and-Norwegian-stave-icicle-and-Cairngorm-ledge icicle-and-hanging-ice-and-eaves-frozen-drip surfaces under Alpine-eaves-and-Norwegian-stave-icicle-and-Cairngorm-ledge Alpine-Dolomites-and-Norwegian-stave-church frozen-drip-light. Sits at the modifier-and-weather end of the grid, parallel to floe and berg 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.