Stamped Bluff Teal

Old English stempan, to stamp — past-participle of stamp. As a color modifier, stamped implies a clear-and-impressed-and-repeating quality, the crisp color of William-Morris-and-Liberty-of-London block-printed-textile carefully-impressed pattern. Sits at the crisp-and-printed end of the grid, parallel to printed and engraved in usage.

Middle Dutch blaf, broad-and-flat. As a color modifier, bluff implies a high-river-bank quality, the visual register of Mississippi-and-Missouri-River-Bluffs tall sediment-and-loess river-bank cliff-face surfaces in late-afternoon Mississippi-and-Missouri-River raking light. Sits at the modifier-and-place end of the grid, parallel to cliff and crag 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.