Punchy Rune Mulberry

A modern adjectival form of punch, to strike sharply. Used as a color word since the early twentieth century for hues that read as highly contrasting and visually loud. Punchy red, punchy yellow: the implication is full saturation combined with optical impact. Sits across the bold and bright buckets, near vivid and striking.

Old Norse rún, secret-or-runic-letter. As a color modifier, rune implies a Norse-runic-letter-and-Futhark-and-incised-stone quality, the visual register of Elder-Futhark-and-Norse-runic-stone hand-Norse-runic-letter-and-Futhark-and-incised-stone Elder-Futhark-and-Norse-runic-stone-and-Viking-grave-marker rune-and-Norse-runic-letter-and-Futhark surfaces under Elder-Futhark-and-Norse-runic-stone-and-Viking-grave-marker Jelling-stone-and-Rök-runestone runic-incision-light. Sits at the modifier-and-myth end of the grid, parallel to omen and sigil in usage.

The genus Morus — the white mulberry (M. alba) feeds silkworms; the black mulberry (M. nigra) bears the deep purple fruit that stains everything it touches. The color refers to a ripe black mulberry: a saturated, slightly red-shifted very deep purple with the slight juiciness of a compound fruit. Cooler than wine, warmer than indigo, with the agricultural weight of a tree that supported the entire Chinese silk industry for two thousand years.