Heavy Noon Violet

Old English hefig, weighty — cognate with heave. Used as a color modifier since at least the seventeenth century to indicate weight in saturation as much as value: heavy with pigment, heavy-bodied. In the engine's adjective grid, heavy sits alongside deep and plush in the dark-and-saturated quadrant. Closer to a fabric description than a pure value word.

Latin nona-hora, ninth-hour. As a color modifier, noon implies a midday-and-overhead-sun quality, the visual register of Mediterranean-and-Provençal high-noon vertical-shadow-and-strong-light bleached-and-clear-cast surfaces under high-noon overhead light. Sits at the modifier-and-time end of the grid, parallel to day and morn 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.