Pleasant Fall Teal

From the French plaisant, pleasing — used as a color modifier since the fifteenth century for hues that read as agreeable, the kind of color that wears well over a long viewing without becoming demanding or fatiguing. Pleasant green, pleasant rose: moderate saturation combined with optical comfort. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside easy and calm.

Old English feallan, to fall / autumn. As a color modifier, fall implies an autumn-leaf-and-harvest quality, the visual register of New-England-and-English-autumn deciduous-leaf-fall maple-and-oak-and-beech autumnal-orange-and-crimson surfaces under Northern-Hemisphere autumn raking light. Sits at the modifier-and-time end of the grid, parallel to yule and reap 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.