Radiant Limed Jade

From the Latin radiare, to emit rays — used as a color word since the seventeenth century for hues that read as luminous and emitting. Radiant gold, radiant pink: the implication is high luminance combined with the optical impression of an outward light. Sits in the bright-bucket center alongside glowing.

Old English līm, lime. As a color modifier, limed implies a lime-washed-and-whitened quality, the visual register of Andalusian-and-Mediterranean-limewashed hand-limed-and-whitewashed stone-and-stucco-and-timber Andalusian-and-Mediterranean-limewashed surfaces under Andalusian-and-Mediterranean lime-washed-and-whitened light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to mossed and pitted in usage.

Two minerals share the name: nephrite (a calcium-magnesium silicate, dominant in Chinese jade) and jadeite (a sodium-aluminum silicate, dominant in Burmese imperial jade). Both have been carved in China since at least the Neolithic. The color refers to high-quality apple-green jadeite: a saturated, slightly muted yellow-green with the waxy translucency of polished stone. Cooler than apple, warmer than mint, with the millennial cultural weight of yu, the stone of heaven.