Smooth Horn Ocean

Old English smōþ, level, polished — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as continuous without texture or break. Smooth tan, smooth gray: moderate saturation combined with optical evenness. Sits in the crisp-bucket alongside even.

Old English horn, horn. As a color modifier, horn implies a translucent-keratin quality, the visual register of cattle-horn-and-deer-antler hand-shaped-and-polished translucent-keratin button-and-comb-and-knife-handle horn-and-antler surfaces under translucent-horn-and-antler hand-polished light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to bone and pith in usage.

The body of saltwater that covers seventy percent of Earth's surface — a single connected mass divided by convention into Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Southern, and Arctic. The color refers to the average reflectance of mid-depth temperate ocean: a saturated, slightly green-shifted deep blue with the optical depth of a body of water that absorbs all light below the photic zone. Deeper than mediterranean, cooler than peacock.