Velvety Hour Rose

An adjectival form of velvet, used since the eighteenth century for colors that read as if they had the matte light-absorbing quality of velvet. Implies high saturation combined with a non-glossy surface — the matte richness of a deep wine in a fabric rather than in a glass. Sits in the bold-and-deep corner of the grid alongside plush and lush.

Latin hōra, time-of-day. As a color modifier, hour implies a single-time-period quality, the visual register of Edwardian-and-Victorian household clock-marked single-hour-of-the-day domestic-and-formal interior surfaces under hour-by-hour pendulum-clock day-light. Sits at the modifier-and-time end of the grid, parallel to bell and vesper in usage.

The Latin rosa, the Greek rhodon, the Persian gul — every European language has a different name for the same flower and the same color. Rose covers the spectrum from blush to fuchsia depending on the cultivar, but in pigment shorthand it means a cool, slightly bluish red — the inside of a damask petal, the dye that washes out of madder root.