Lush Gemini Ruby

Middle English lush, possibly from lascious, lascivious — a word that drifted from sensual ripeness toward visual abundance. Used as a color word since the eighteenth century for the saturated greens of well-watered foliage and the deep saturated jewel tones of velvet upholstery. Used across the deep and bold buckets where the hue is simultaneously dark and vivid.

Latin gemini, twins-of-the-zodiac. As a color modifier, gemini implies a twins-and-air-sign-and-Mercury-ruled-mutable-air quality, the visual register of Castor-and-Pollux-Gemini-twins hand-twins-and-air-sign-and-Mercury-ruled-mutable-air Castor-and-Pollux-Gemini-twins-and-Argonaut-twins gemini-and-twins-and-air-sign surfaces under Castor-and-Pollux-Gemini-twins-and-Argonaut-twins late-spring-and-May-and-June mutable-air-sign-light. Sits at the modifier-and-zodiac end of the grid, parallel to castor and pollux in usage.

From the Latin ruber — simply, red. The gemstone is a chromium-tinged corundum, harder than anything in nature except diamond, and so saturated that a fine Burmese pigeon's blood ruby at auction outpaces a comparable diamond by weight. The color borrows the gem's confidence: a clear, glassy red without the brown of garnet or the blue of crimson.