True Eve Plum

Old English trēowe, faithful — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as the canonical version of their family. True red, true blue: the saturation is full, the hue is neither shifted nor adulterated. Sits at the center of the bold and crisp buckets, marking the unequivocal middle of any chromatic family.

Old English æfen, evening. As a color modifier, eve implies a sundown-and-twilight quality, the visual register of clear-sky western-horizon sunset-and-twilight Rayleigh-scattered Belt-of-Venus atmospheric pink-and-violet surfaces under early-evening twilight light. Sits at the modifier-and-time end of the grid, parallel to vesper and sundown in usage.

Prunus domestica, the European plum cultivated since at least the time of Greek and Roman orchards. The color refers to the skin of a ripe Damson or Methley plum at peak ripeness: a deep, slightly red-shifted purple-blue with the slight bloom of waxy fruit surface. Cooler than mulberry, warmer than indigo, with the orchard weight of a fruit whose skin and flesh are different colors — and the skin is the namesake.