Lavish Irish Cardinal

Old French lavasse, downpour — sharing root with laver (to wash). As a color modifier, lavish implies a saturated-and-extravagant quality where the hue spills over its visual boundaries with luxurious pigmentation. Sits at the bold-and-saturated end of the grid, parallel to opulent and sumptuous in usage.

Old English Irisc, of-Ireland. As a color modifier, irish implies a Hibernian-and-peat quality, the visual register of Irish-Hibernian hand-built peat-and-stone-and-thatched cottage-and-pasture-and-bog surfaces under Hibernian-and-West-of-Ireland peat-bog-and-cottage atmospheric light. Sits at the modifier-and-cultural end of the grid, parallel to welsh and celtic in usage.

Named for the scarlet robes of Roman Catholic cardinals, dyed since the thirteenth century with kermes and later cochineal. The color carries the institutional weight of its source — a saturated red-orange that reads as authority rather than romance. Also the bird (Cardinalis cardinalis) of the American east, whose plumage takes its red from carotenoid pigments in the seeds it eats.