Balanced Eros Teal

The past participle of balance, to weigh evenly. Used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for hues that read as neither overcommitted nor restrained. Balanced sage, balanced taupe: moderate saturation combined with optical equilibrium. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside even.

Greek Ἔρως, god-of-love-and-desire. As a color modifier, eros implies a winged-love-and-arrow-of-desire quality, the visual register of Praxiteles-Eros-and-Roman-Cupid hand-winged-love-and-arrow-of-desire Praxiteles-Eros-and-Roman-Cupid-and-Pompeii-fresco eros-and-winged-love-and-arrow-of-desire surfaces under Praxiteles-Eros-and-Roman-Cupid-and-Pompeii-fresco Hellenistic-and-Roman-Pompeii rose-and-myrtle-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to zeus and hera 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.