Balanced Dill Verdigris

The past participle of balance, to weigh evenly. Used as a color modifier since the eighteenth century for hues that read as neither overcommitted nor restrained. Balanced sage, balanced taupe: moderate saturation combined with optical equilibrium. Sits at the crisp-bucket center alongside even.

Old English dile, aromatic-fern-leaf-herb. As a color modifier, dill implies a feathery-and-fresh-and-pickling quality, the visual register of Scandinavian-and-pickling-dill hand-feathery-and-fresh-and-pickling Scandinavian-and-pickling-dill-and-Polish-Eastern-European dill-and-feathery-and-fresh-and-pickling surfaces under Scandinavian-and-pickling-dill-and-Polish-Eastern-European Stockholm-and-Gdansk-and-Riga-pickling-jar Baltic-pickling-light. Sits at the modifier-and-flavor end of the grid, parallel to chive and anise in usage.

The basic copper carbonate that forms on weathered copper and bronze — the pigment scraped from oxidized metal and used in Renaissance painting before being supplanted by more stable greens. The color refers to a thick verdigris on aged copper roofing or the Statue of Liberty's surface: a soft, slightly muted blue-green with the powdery finish of mineral oxide. Cooler than patina, warmer than seafoam, with the archaeological weight of a mineral made by time.