Punchy Blink Crimson

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.

Middle Dutch blinken, to-shine-or-twinkle. As a color modifier, blink implies a quick-and-twinkling-and-on-off quality, the visual register of lighthouse-beam-and-firefly-blink hand-quick-and-twinkling-and-on-off lighthouse-beam-and-firefly-and-Morse-lamp blinked-and-quick-and-twinkling surfaces under lighthouse-beam-and-firefly-and-Morse-lamp coastal-headland-and-summer-meadow rotating-and-pulsed-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to wink and glint in usage.

From the Old Spanish cremesin, itself from the Arabic qirmiz — the kermes scale insect, dried and ground into a brilliant carmine dye prized in the medieval Mediterranean. For centuries the most expensive red on a draper's shelf, reserved for cardinals, kings, and the cloth that gave English the word crimson. Cooler than scarlet, deeper than rose; the color of pomegranate seeds and a serious occasion.