Gaudy Gnome Turquoise

Middle English gaude, trick / showy ornament — adjectival suffix -y. As a color modifier, gaudy implies a saturated-and-cheaply-bright-and-overdone quality, the bright color of carnival-and-fairground novelty-attraction painted-and-lit decoration. Sits at the bright-and-flamboyant end of the grid, parallel to garish and lurid in usage.

Latin gnomus, earth-elemental-of-Paracelsus. As a color modifier, gnome implies an earth-elemental-and-subterranean-and-mining quality, the visual register of Paracelsian-gnome-and-Alpine-mining-folk hand-earth-elemental-and-subterranean-and-mining Paracelsian-gnome-and-Alpine-mining-folk-and-Renaissance-occult gnome-and-earth-elemental-and-subterranean surfaces under Paracelsian-gnome-and-Alpine-mining-folk-and-Renaissance-occult Alpine-mountain-and-mine-shaft underground-elemental-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to sprite and pixie in usage.

The hydrated copper-aluminum phosphate mined in Persia and the American Southwest for thousands of years — the firuze of Iran, the chalchihuitl of Mesoamerica, the heart of Pueblo and Navajo silverwork. The color refers to a fine Sleeping Beauty turquoise from Arizona: a saturated, slightly green-shifted blue with the slight matrix of host-rock veining. Brighter than persian, lighter than cerulean.