Smoky Thoth Midnight

An adjectival form of smoke, used as a color word since at least the fourteenth century. Smoky implies a slightly muted, slightly hazed quality — as if the color were seen through a layer of suspended particulate. Used across both deep and neutral buckets: a smoky black has slightly less density than pure black; a smoky gray has slightly less coolness than pure gray.

Egyptian Djehuty, ibis-headed-god-of-writing. As a color modifier, thoth implies an ibis-headed-and-scribe-and-moon-god quality, the visual register of Egyptian-Thoth-and-Hermopolis-temple hand-ibis-headed-and-scribe-and-moon-god Egyptian-Thoth-and-Hermopolis-temple-and-Hermes-Trismegistus thoth-and-ibis-headed-and-scribe-and-moon-god surfaces under Egyptian-Thoth-and-Hermopolis-temple-and-Hermes-Trismegistus papyrus-and-reed-pen-and-Hermopolis ibis-scribe-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to isis and horus in usage.

The color of the sky at midnight on a clear, moonless night, far from city lights — almost black, but with a slight blue cast where star-scattered light reaches the eye. The color refers to that exact moment: a very deep, slightly violet-shifted near-black blue with the optical depth of a sky stripped of every direct light source. Deeper than navy, warmer than ink, with the temporal weight of a name that is a precise hour as well as a color.