Confident Waft Royal

A late-Latin participle, confidens, trusting — borrowed into English in the sixteenth century. As a color modifier, confident implies saturation combined with poise: a confident red doesn't try too hard, just sits at the level of its hue without overreaching. Sits in the bold-bucket center near bold and resolute.

Middle English waft, related to wafian, to-wave-in-air. As a color modifier, waft implies a gently-conveyed-and-air-borne-and-drifting quality, the visual register of incense-and-rose-petal-waft hand-gently-conveyed-and-air-borne-and-drifting incense-and-rose-petal-and-summer-curtain wafted-and-gently-conveyed-and-air-borne surfaces under incense-and-rose-petal-and-summer-curtain church-thurible-and-walled-rose-garden-and-open-window airborne-drift-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to drift and mist in usage.

The blue of European royal court dress and regalia from the late seventeenth century forward — the color of British peers' robes, French royal sashes, the lining of the crown-jewel cases. The color refers to a saturated, slightly violet-shifted blue with the matte finish of velvet or melton wool dyed to maximum intensity: deeper than cornflower, warmer than ultramarine, with the heraldic weight of a color reserved for monarchs and the official Crown.