Highborn Wake Forest

Old English hēah-boren, high-born — past-participle of bear. As a color modifier, highborn implies a saturated-and-aristocratic-and-elite quality, the deep-rich color of pre-modern English high-born aristocratic-class livery-and-armorial bearings. Sits at the bold-and-aristocratic end of the grid, parallel to noble and aristocratic in usage.

Old English wacian, to be awake. As a color modifier, wake implies a morning-rising-and-dawn quality, the visual register of first-light-and-dawn-rising atmospheric soft-low-light Rayleigh-scattered first-of-the-day pre-dawn-and-dawn surfaces under first-light dawn-rising light. Sits at the modifier-and-time end of the grid, parallel to rise and morn in usage.

The dense canopy of a temperate or tropical woodland — oak, beech, pine, eucalyptus, mahogany — wherever leaves close above to filter the light below. Forest green refers to the average reflectance of a healthy mid-summer canopy seen from below: a saturated, slightly muted green with the matte finish of layered chlorophyll. Deeper than fern, cooler than olive, with the ecological weight of a word that has named every wooded biome on Earth.