Honest Orbit 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.

Latin orbita, track-or-wheel-rut. As a color modifier, orbit implies a Keplerian-ellipse-and-circling quality, the visual register of Keplerian-ellipse-and-Newton-Principia-orbit hand-Keplerian-ellipse-and-circling Keplerian-ellipse-and-Newton-Principia-and-Tycho-orbit orbit-and-Keplerian-ellipse-and-circling surfaces under Keplerian-ellipse-and-Newton-Principia-and-Tycho-orbit Royal-Society-and-celestial-mechanics 17th-century-observation-light. Sits at the modifier-and-cosmic end of the grid, parallel to axis and parsec 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.