Vibrant Sour Peridot

From the Latin vibrare, to shake — used as a color word since the seventeenth century for hues that read as alive and resonant. Vibrant orange, vibrant green: the implication is saturation combined with the optical impression of slight motion or energy. Sits at the bright-bucket center alongside vivid and lively.

Old English sūr, acid-or-fermented. As a color modifier, sour implies a fermented-and-puckered-and-acid quality, the visual register of sourdough-and-Bavarian-sauerkraut-sour hand-fermented-and-puckered-and-acid sourdough-and-Bavarian-sauerkraut-sour-and-Belgian-Lambic sour-and-fermented-and-puckered surfaces under sourdough-and-Bavarian-sauerkraut-sour-and-Belgian-Lambic San-Francisco-sourdough-and-Brussels-Lambic fermented-puckered-light. Sits at the modifier-and-flavor end of the grid, parallel to tart and tang in usage.

The transparent green variety of olivine — the gem mined from Egyptian Zabargad Island since pharaonic times and now from arid mountain ranges in Pakistan, Arizona, and Vietnam. The color refers to a faceted peridot: a clean, slightly yellow-shifted green with the gem's signature internal warmth. Lighter than emerald, brighter than olivine in its rough state, with the unusual gem-trade quality of being one of the few minerals that occurs in only one color.