Conquering Bluff Indigo

Latin conquīrere, to seek thoroughly — present-participle of conquer. As a color modifier, conquering implies a saturated-and-overwhelming-and-victorious quality where the hue overcomes neighboring colors through pure pigmentation strength. Sits at the bold-and-celebratory end of the grid, parallel to triumphant and dominant.

Middle Dutch blaf, broad-and-flat. As a color modifier, bluff implies a high-river-bank quality, the visual register of Mississippi-and-Missouri-River-Bluffs tall sediment-and-loess river-bank cliff-face surfaces in late-afternoon Mississippi-and-Missouri-River raking light. Sits at the modifier-and-place end of the grid, parallel to cliff and crag in usage.

Indigofera tinctoria, the South Asian legume whose leaves yield the deep blue dye that has clothed humanity for at least four thousand years — Egyptian linen, Mayan textile, the slave-grown plantations of Carolina. The color refers to a freshly indigo-dyed cotton thread: a saturated, slightly violet-shifted deep blue with the slight lustre of a fiber surface oxidized in air. Deeper than cobalt, cooler than royal.