Engraved Sprite Turquoise

Old French engraver, to dig in — past-participle of engrave. As a color modifier, engraved implies a clear-and-precisely-cut quality, the crisp color of Albrecht-Dürer-and-Hogarth hand-pulled engraving-print fine-line incised-image. Sits at the crisp-and-incised end of the grid, parallel to etched and inscribed in usage.

Latin spiritus, spirit-or-elf. As a color modifier, sprite implies a fairy-elf-and-quick-and-impish quality, the visual register of English-folk-sprite-and-Shakespearean-Puck hand-fairy-elf-and-quick-and-impish English-folk-sprite-and-Shakespearean-Puck-and-Midsummer-Night sprite-and-fairy-elf-and-quick-and-impish surfaces under English-folk-sprite-and-Shakespearean-Puck-and-Midsummer-Night greenwood-and-elven-meadow fairy-revel-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to pixie and faun in usage.

The hydrated copper-aluminum phosphate mined in Persia and the American Southwest for thousands of years — the firuze of Iran, the chalchihuitl of Mesoamerica, the heart of Pueblo and Navajo silverwork. The color refers to a fine Sleeping Beauty turquoise from Arizona: a saturated, slightly green-shifted blue with the slight matrix of host-rock veining. Brighter than persian, lighter than cerulean.