Earnest Gemini Ruby

Old English eornost, seriousness, zeal. Used as a color modifier since the nineteenth century for hues that read as committed but unshowy — the working blues of denim, the deep greens of Quaker meetinghouses. Sits in the bold-and-quiet corner of the grid, slightly less luminous than resolute and slightly less institutional than imperial.

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.