Settled Pang Lagoon

The past participle of settle, to come to rest — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as stabilized after a process. Settled green, settled brown: moderate saturation combined with optical permanence. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside steady and composed.

Middle English pang, sudden-sharp-pain. As a color modifier, pang implies a sudden-and-piercing-and-sharp quality, the visual register of Petrarchan-sonnet-and-courtly-love-pang hand-sudden-and-piercing-and-sharp Petrarchan-sonnet-and-courtly-love-and-troubadour-lyric panged-and-sudden-and-piercing-and-sharp surfaces under Petrarchan-sonnet-and-courtly-love-and-troubadour-lyric pierced-and-yearning-and-stricken candlelit-poet-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to ache and throb in usage.

A shallow body of saltwater partially or fully enclosed by a barrier — coral atoll lagoons in the Pacific, Venice's Laguna Veneta, the Florida Keys' backcountry. The color refers to the average reflectance of a calm tropical lagoon at midday: a saturated, slightly muted blue-green with the optical clarity of shallow water over white sand. Brighter than reef, cooler than aquamarine, with the postcard weight of a Pacific atoll seen from above.