Spotless Meteor Teal

Old English spott (spot) plus suffix -less. As a color modifier, spotless implies a clear-and-unmarked quality where the hue carries no contaminating speck or stain. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to pristine and unblemished in usage.

Greek μετέωρος, suspended-in-air. As a color modifier, meteor implies a streaking-and-burning-and-shooting-star quality, the visual register of Perseids-and-Leonids-meteor hand-streaking-and-burning-and-shooting-star Perseids-and-Leonids-and-Geminids-meteor meteor-and-streaking-and-burning-and-shooting-star surfaces under Perseids-and-Leonids-and-Geminids-meteor August-and-November-and-December-night-sky shooting-star-light. Sits at the modifier-and-cosmic end of the grid, parallel to comet and nova 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.