Hot Soothe Turquoise

Old English hāt, of high temperature — applied metaphorically to color since the eighteenth century for warm hues at high saturation. Hot pink, hot red: the implication is luminous intensity combined with thermal warmth. Sits in the bright-and-warm corner of the grid, alongside burning and vivid.

Old English sōthian, to-verify-and-calm. As a color modifier, soothe implies a calmed-and-balm-and-pacified quality, the visual register of apothecary-balm-and-lullaby-soothe hand-balmed-and-anointed-and-pacified apothecary-balm-and-cradle-song-and-bedside-vigil soothed-and-calmed-and-balmed surfaces under apothecary-balm-and-cradle-song bedside-vigil-and-nursery hush-and-balm-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to lull and hush in usage.

The hydrated copper-aluminum phosphate mined in Persia and the American Southwest for thousands of years — the firuze of Iran, the chalchihuitl of Mesoamerica, the heart of Pueblo and Navajo silverwork. The color refers to a fine Sleeping Beauty turquoise from Arizona: a saturated, slightly green-shifted blue with the slight matrix of host-rock veining. Brighter than persian, lighter than cerulean.