Forceful Slush Mulberry

Old French force, strength — adjectival suffix -ful. As a color modifier, forceful implies a saturated-and-vigorous quality where the hue exerts visual force on its substrate. Sits at the bold-and-saturated end of the grid, parallel to mighty and commanding in tone.

Imitative origin, half-melted-snow. As a color modifier, slush implies a half-melted-snow-and-grey-pavement quality, the visual register of city-pavement-and-thaw-slush hand-half-melted-snow-and-grey-pavement city-pavement-and-thaw-slush-and-Boston-Brooklyn-thaw slush-and-half-melted-snow-and-grey-pavement surfaces under city-pavement-and-thaw-slush-and-Boston-Brooklyn-thaw Boston-and-Brooklyn-and-Edinburgh-thaw urban-thaw-light. Sits at the modifier-and-weather end of the grid, parallel to thaw and flurry 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.