Even Pitted Teal

Old English efen, flat, equal — used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues that read as uniformly distributed across a surface. Even gray, even tan: the implication is moderate saturation combined with optical uniformity. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside steady and balanced.

Old English pyt, pit / hole. As a color modifier, pitted implies a small-hole-and-mark-pattern quality, the visual register of worn-and-pitted-stone-and-leather hand-worn-and-pitted stone-and-leather-and-metal worn-and-pitted-mark-and-hole surfaces under worn-and-pitted-stone-and-leather aged light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to mossed and limed 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.