Bold Gloom Forest

Old English beald, brave, courageous — a quality word that crossed over to color in the late seventeenth century. Bold describes a color that asserts itself: high saturation combined with mid lightness, where the hue presents itself without compromise. Sits at the center of the bold-bucket grid, near strong and rich. Closer to a presence word than a pigment word.

Middle English gloumen, to-look-sullen. As a color modifier, gloom implies a sullen-and-darkened-and-overcast quality, the visual register of Northumbrian-moor-and-Scottish-glen-gloom hand-sullen-and-darkened-and-overcast Northumbrian-moor-and-Scottish-glen-and-Yorkshire-dale gloomed-and-darkened-and-overcast surfaces under Northumbrian-moor-and-Scottish-glen overcast-and-low-cloud heather-and-bracken-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to murk and drear in usage.

The dense canopy of a temperate or tropical woodland — oak, beech, pine, eucalyptus, mahogany — wherever leaves close above to filter the light below. Forest green refers to the average reflectance of a healthy mid-summer canopy seen from below: a saturated, slightly muted green with the matte finish of layered chlorophyll. Deeper than fern, cooler than olive, with the ecological weight of a word that has named every wooded biome on Earth.