Balanced Chili Teal

The past participle of balance, to weigh evenly. Used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for hues that read as neither overcommitted nor restrained. Balanced sage, balanced taupe: moderate saturation combined with optical equilibrium. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside even.

Nahuatl chīlli, capsicum-fruit. As a color modifier, chili implies a Mesoamerican-capsicum-and-fiery quality, the visual register of Mesoamerican-and-Oaxacan-chili hand-Mesoamerican-capsicum-and-fiery Mesoamerican-and-Oaxacan-chili-and-Yucatec-and-Veracruzano chili-and-Mesoamerican-capsicum surfaces under Mesoamerican-and-Oaxacan-chili-and-Yucatec-and-Veracruzano Oaxaca-and-Veracruz-and-Yucatán Mesoamerican-spice-light. Sits at the modifier-and-flavor end of the grid, parallel to pepper and pimento 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.