Modest Horn Teal

Latin modestus, moderate — used as a color modifier since the sixteenth century for hues that read as understated and unwilling to claim more visual space than they need. Modest taupe, modest beige: moderate-to-low saturation combined with optical restraint. Sits at the crisp-and-quiet edge of the grid alongside quiet and plain.

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.

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.