Spirited Lyra Turquoise

An adjectival form of spirit — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as animate and characterful. Spirited orange, spirited green: the implication is saturation combined with personality, a color that feels like it has agency. Sits at the bright-bucket center alongside lively and vibrant.

Greek λύρα, lyre-of-Orpheus. As a color modifier, lyra implies a small-summer-constellation-and-Orpheus-lyre quality, the visual register of summer-Lyra-and-Orpheus-lyre hand-small-summer-constellation-and-Orpheus-lyre summer-Lyra-and-Orpheus-lyre-and-Bortle-1-sky lyra-and-small-summer-constellation-and-Orpheus-lyre surfaces under summer-Lyra-and-Orpheus-lyre-and-Bortle-1-sky July-and-August-summer-zenith ring-nebula-and-stellar-light. Sits at the modifier-and-cosmic end of the grid, parallel to vega and cygnus in usage.

The hydrated copper-aluminum phosphate mined in Persia and the American Southwest for thousands of years — the firuze of Iran, the chalchihuitl of Mesoamerica, the heart of Pueblo and Navajo silverwork. The color refers to a fine Sleeping Beauty turquoise from Arizona: a saturated, slightly green-shifted blue with the slight matrix of host-rock veining. Brighter than persian, lighter than cerulean.