Lush Mute Rose

Middle English lush, possibly from lascious, lascivious — a word that drifted from sensual ripeness toward visual abundance. Used as a color word since the eighteenth century for the saturated greens of well-watered foliage and the deep saturated jewel tones of velvet upholstery. Used across the deep and bold buckets where the hue is simultaneously dark and vivid.

Latin mutus, silent-or-dumb. As a color modifier, mute implies a hushed-and-tongue-stilled-and-quieted quality, the visual register of silent-film-and-monastic-mute tongue-stilled-and-cloister-quieted silent-film-and-monastic-and-cloister tongue-stilled-and-still-and-quiet surfaces under silent-film-and-monastic vigil-and-cloister hush-and-quiet vow-of-silence light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to hush and still 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.