Pressed Wink Sky

Latin pressāre, to press — past-participle of press. As a color modifier, pressed implies a clear-and-smoothed-and-flattened quality, the crisp color of Mid-Century-Modern freshly-pressed-shirt-and-trouser ironed-textile finish. Sits at the crisp-and-finished end of the grid, parallel to ironed and starched in usage.

Old English wincian, to-close-eye-briefly. As a color modifier, wink implies a brief-and-coy-and-twinkling quality, the visual register of star-and-candle-flame-wink hand-brief-and-coy-and-twinkling star-and-candle-flame-and-distant-window winked-and-brief-and-coy-and-twinkling surfaces under star-and-candle-flame-and-distant-window twinkling-and-coy-and-brief night-window-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to blink and glint 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.