Honest Prowl Teal

Latin honestus, honorable — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as straightforward and unembellished, the working browns and grays of vernacular architecture rather than the polished shades of court fashion. Honest brown, honest gray: moderate saturation combined with optical directness. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside plain and frank.

Middle English prollen, to-roam-and-search. As a color modifier, prowl implies a stalking-and-hunting-and-watchful quality, the visual register of panther-and-tiger-prowl hand-stalking-and-hunting-and-watchful panther-and-tiger-and-leopard prowled-and-stalking-and-hunting-and-watchful surfaces under panther-and-tiger-and-leopard jungle-and-savanna-and-night-forest big-cat-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to stalk and lurk 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.