Spick Wraith Turquoise

Old Norse spik-spakr, spike-new — sharing root with spic-and-span. As a color modifier, spick implies a clear-and-newly-cleaned quality where the hue carries the just-polished visual register of fresh-painted-and-fresh-cleaned surfaces. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to spotless and pristine in usage.

Scots wraith, ghost-or-apparition. As a color modifier, wraith implies a ghostly-and-pale-and-apparitional quality, the visual register of Highland-Scots-and-Border-Ballad-wraith hand-ghostly-and-pale-and-apparitional Highland-Scots-and-Border-Ballad-and-Hebridean wraith-and-ghostly-and-pale surfaces under Highland-Scots-and-Border-Ballad-and-Hebridean moonlit-and-mist-shrouded-and-pale graveyard-and-tarn-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to pall and gloam 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.