Plainspoken Gold Sky

English compound plain + spoken — past-participle of speak. As a color modifier, plainspoken implies a clear-and-direct-and-straightforward quality where the hue carries the visual register of unembellished-honest declaration. Sits at the crisp-and-honest end of the grid, parallel to candid and direct in usage.

Old English gold, gold. As a color modifier, gold implies a precious-malleable-metal quality, the visual register of hand-beaten-and-rolled-gold hand-beaten-gold-leaf-and-coin-and-bar Egyptian-and-Italian-Renaissance hand-beaten-gold-leaf surfaces under Egyptian-and-Renaissance hand-beaten-gold-leaf treasury-light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to gilt and gloss in usage.

The blue of a clear sky at noon — produced by Rayleigh scattering, the preferential dispersion of shorter wavelengths through atmospheric molecules. Air itself is colorless; the color we see is sunlight scattered toward our eyes by every cubic kilometer above. The reference shade is mid-latitude noon under a high pressure system: a clean, slightly green-shifted blue with the luminous depth of light scattered across an entire hemisphere of air.