Placid Pepper Teal

Latin placidus, gentle / quiet — derived from placēre (to please). As a color modifier, placid implies a clear-and-unruffled quality where the hue carries the visual register of mirror-smooth lake-surface in windless mid-morning. Sits at the crisp-and-calm end of the grid, parallel to serene and peaceful in usage.

Latin piper, black-pepper-corn. As a color modifier, pepper implies a black-pepper-corn-and-Malabar-Coast quality, the visual register of Malabar-Coast-and-Vietnamese-pepper hand-black-pepper-corn-and-Malabar-Coast Malabar-Coast-and-Vietnamese-pepper-and-Tellicherry pepper-and-black-pepper-corn surfaces under Malabar-Coast-and-Vietnamese-pepper-and-Tellicherry Malabar-and-Tellicherry-and-Phu-Quoc Indian-Ocean-spice-light. Sits at the modifier-and-flavor end of the grid, parallel to clove and cumin 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.