Punchy Dill violet

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 English dile, aromatic-fern-leaf-herb. As a color modifier, dill implies a feathery-and-fresh-and-pickling quality, the visual register of Scandinavian-and-pickling-dill hand-feathery-and-fresh-and-pickling Scandinavian-and-pickling-dill-and-Polish-Eastern-European dill-and-feathery-and-fresh-and-pickling surfaces under Scandinavian-and-pickling-dill-and-Polish-Eastern-European Stockholm-and-Gdansk-and-Riga-pickling-jar Baltic-pickling-light. Sits at the modifier-and-flavor end of the grid, parallel to chive and anise in usage.

Viola odorata, the European sweet violet — small, fragrant, and the original meaning of the color name in English (the Violet of the rainbow). The color refers to a fresh sweet violet blossom in late winter: a saturated, slightly red-shifted deep blue-purple with the matte finish of small five-petaled flower. Cooler than amethyst, warmer than indigo, with the perfumed weight of a flower used in Roman garlands and Victorian eau de toilette.