Sterile Kiln Teal

Latin sterilis, barren / not-fertile — sharing root with Greek steiros (barren). As a color modifier, sterile implies a clear-and-medical-clean-and-stripped quality, the crisp color of operating-theater surgical-environment white-and-stainless-steel surfaces. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to sanitary and hygienic in usage.

Old English cyln, brick-or-pot-firing oven. As a color modifier, kiln implies a fired-and-glazed quality, the visual register of Stoke-on-Trent-and-Jingdezhen hand-fired pottery-and-brickwork high-temperature ceramic-firing surfaces under industrial-pottery-firing Stoke-and-Jingdezhen kiln-yard light. Sits at the modifier-and-place end of the grid, parallel to mill and forge 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.