Pleasant Pile Teal

From the French plaisant, pleasing — used as a color modifier since the fifteenth century for hues that read as agreeable, the kind of color that wears well over a long viewing without becoming demanding or fatiguing. Pleasant green, pleasant rose: moderate saturation combined with optical comfort. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside easy and calm.

Old French pile, raised-cut-thread. As a color modifier, pile implies a raised-cut-thread-and-velvet quality, the visual register of velvet-and-corduroy-and-pile-rug hand-cut-and-raised-thread velvet-and-corduroy-and-pile-rug-textile surfaces under velvet-and-corduroy-and-pile-rug textile workshop-light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to plush and nap in usage.

Anas crecca, the small dabbling duck whose male in breeding plumage sports a chestnut head crossed by a glossy green-blue stripe. The color refers to that stripe — the iridescent panel just behind the eye: a saturated, slightly muted blue-green with the optical depth of structural color rather than pigment. Cooler than cypress, warmer than cerulean, with the ornithological specificity of a color named for one feather of one bird.