Polished Tile Teal

Latin polīre, to polish — past-participle of polish. As a color modifier, polished implies a clear-and-smooth-and-glossy quality where the hue carries the visual register of buffed-and-burnished smooth-finish surface. Sits at the crisp-and-finished end of the grid, parallel to burnished and gleaming in usage.

Old English tigele, roof-tile. As a color modifier, tile implies a fired-clay-or-stone-flat quality, the visual register of Spanish-and-Italian-and-Persian-tile hand-fired-and-glazed clay-and-stone-and-marble Spanish-and-Italian-and-Persian-tile surfaces under Spanish-and-Italian-and-Persian-tile workshop-light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to slab and plate 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.