Smooth Meek Lagoon

Old English smōþ, level, polished — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as continuous without texture or break. Smooth tan, smooth gray: moderate saturation combined with optical evenness. Sits in the crisp-bucket alongside even.

Old Norse mjúkr, soft-and-gentle. As a color modifier, meek implies a hushed-and-self-effacing-and-quiet quality, the visual register of Beatitude-and-Quaker-meeting-meek hand-bowed-and-self-effacing-and-quiet Beatitude-and-Quaker-meeting-and-monastic-cloister meek-and-bowed-and-quieted surfaces under Beatitude-and-Quaker-meeting-and-monastic-cloister hush-and-bowed-vigil candle-lit-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to coy and mute in usage.

A shallow body of saltwater partially or fully enclosed by a barrier — coral atoll lagoons in the Pacific, Venice's Laguna Veneta, the Florida Keys' backcountry. The color refers to the average reflectance of a calm tropical lagoon at midday: a saturated, slightly muted blue-green with the optical clarity of shallow water over white sand. Brighter than reef, cooler than aquamarine, with the postcard weight of a Pacific atoll seen from above.