Pleasant Glazed 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 glæs, glass. As a color modifier, glazed implies a fired-pottery-glaze-and-glass-coating quality, the visual register of Stoke-on-Trent-and-Italian-Maiolica-glazed hand-applied-and-fired ceramic-and-pottery-and-tile-glaze Stoke-on-Trent-and-Italian-Maiolica glazed-pottery surfaces under Stoke-on-Trent-and-Italian-Maiolica hand-glazed pottery-and-tile workshop-light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to gloss and enameled 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.