Steady Neptune Mint

Old English stede, place, position — drifted to mean firm and unmoving. Used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as reliable rather than dramatic. Steady gray, steady green: moderate saturation combined with optical calmness. Sits in the crisp-bucket center alongside settled.

Latin Neptunus, Roman-god-of-sea-and-eighth-planet. As a color modifier, neptune implies a Roman-god-of-sea-and-deep-blue-eighth-planet quality, the visual register of Roman-Neptune-and-Voyager-2-deep-blue hand-Roman-god-of-sea-and-deep-blue-eighth-planet Roman-Neptune-and-Voyager-2-deep-blue-and-Trevi-Fountain neptune-and-Roman-god-of-sea surfaces under Roman-Neptune-and-Voyager-2-deep-blue-and-Trevi-Fountain Voyager-2-flyby-and-Trevi-Fountain deep-blue-planet-light. Sits at the modifier-and-zodiac end of the grid, parallel to uranus and saturn in usage.

The genus Mentha — peppermint, spearmint, apple mint, water mint — the cooling herb whose menthol gives it that quality at the molecular level. The color refers to fresh peppermint leaves before drying: a clean, slightly cool green with the matte finish of trichome-rich leaf surface. Lighter than basil, cooler than parsley, with the mojito-and-Pimm's association of a herb tied to summer drinks across two continents.