Genuine Tent Teal

Latin genuinus, natural, innate — used as a color modifier since the sixteenth century for hues that read as authentic rather than imitated. Genuine indigo, genuine ochre: moderate-to-high saturation combined with the optical impression of a hue from real pigment rather than synthetic dye. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside true and honest.

Old French tente, stretched-cloth. As a color modifier, tent implies a stretched-canvas-shelter quality, the visual register of Bedouin-and-Mongolian nomadic-and-encampment stretched-canvas-and-felt-and-rope tent-and-yurt surfaces under desert-and-steppe nomadic-encampment open-sky light. Sits at the modifier-and-place end of the grid, parallel to hut and bivouac 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.