Hygienic Rise Teal

Greek hygieinós, healthful — derived from Hygieia (goddess of health). As a color modifier, hygienic implies a clear-and-medical-clean quality, the crisp color of Mid-Century-Modern clinical-and-hospital interior-architecture surfaces. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to sanitary and sterile in usage.

Old English rīsan, to ascend. As a color modifier, rise implies an ascending-and-emerging quality, the visual register of moonrise-and-sunrise ascending-and-emerging horizon-and-celestial-body atmospheric scattering-of-light surfaces under ascending horizon-and-celestial light. Sits at the modifier-and-time end of the grid, parallel to set and sunup 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.