Plumb Beam Teal

Latin plumbum, lead — referring to the lead-weighted plumb-line of pre-modern carpentry. As a color modifier, plumb implies a clear-and-vertical-true quality where the hue carries the visual register of gravity-aligned-and-perfectly-vertical surface. Sits at the crisp-and-balanced end of the grid, parallel to level and squared in usage.

Old English bēam, tree-or-ray-of-light. As a color modifier, beam implies a focused-and-shaft-of-light quality, the visual register of lighthouse-and-cathedral-clerestory-beam hand-focused-and-shaft-of-light lighthouse-and-cathedral-clerestory-and-search-light beamed-and-focused-and-shaft-of-light surfaces under lighthouse-and-cathedral-clerestory-and-search-light coastal-headland-and-Gothic-nave-and-night-sky directed-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to ray and gleam 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.