Sanitary Shine Sky

Latin sānitās, health — adjectival suffix -ary. As a color modifier, sanitary implies a clear-and-clean-and-medical quality, the crisp color of Bauhaus-and-Modern clinical-and-hospital interior-architecture white-tile-and-stainless-steel surfaces. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to hygienic and sterile in usage.

Old English scīnan, to-shine. As a color modifier, shine implies a polished-and-reflective-light quality, the visual register of polished-silver-and-bronze-shine hand-polished-and-buffed silver-and-bronze-and-brass-and-tin polished-and-reflective-shine surfaces under polished-silver-and-bronze-shine workshop-light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to gloss and sleek 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.