Spick Gilt Teal

Old Norse spik-spakr, spike-new — sharing root with spic-and-span. As a color modifier, spick implies a clear-and-newly-cleaned quality where the hue carries the just-polished visual register of fresh-painted-and-fresh-cleaned surfaces. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to spotless and pristine in usage.

Old English gyldan, to-gild. As a color modifier, gilt implies a thin-gold-leaf-coating quality, the visual register of medieval-illuminated-manuscript-and-Renaissance-altarpiece hand-applied-and-burnished gold-leaf-coating gilt-and-gold-leaf surfaces under medieval-and-Renaissance hand-applied-gilt altarpiece-and-manuscript light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to gold and gloss 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.