Earnest Mira Rose

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 mira, wonderful-or-marvelous. As a color modifier, mira implies a variable-pulsing-and-red-giant-and-wondrous quality, the visual register of Cetus-Whale-and-variable-Mira-the-Wonder hand-variable-pulsing-and-red-giant-and-wondrous Cetus-Whale-and-variable-Mira-and-Hevelius-discovery mira-and-variable-pulsing-and-red-giant-and-wondrous surfaces under Cetus-Whale-and-variable-Mira-and-Hevelius-discovery 332-day-cycle-and-deep-red-pulse pulsing-stellar-light. Sits at the modifier-and-cosmic end of the grid, parallel to nova and pulsar 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.