Velvety Awe 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.

Old Norse agi, fright-and-reverence. As a color modifier, awe implies a reverent-and-overwhelmed-and-hushed quality, the visual register of Burkean-sublime-and-Caspar-David-Friedrich-awe hand-reverent-and-overwhelmed-and-hushed Burkean-sublime-and-Caspar-David-Friedrich-and-Romantic-vista awed-and-reverent-and-overwhelmed-and-hushed surfaces under Burkean-sublime-and-Caspar-David-Friedrich-and-Romantic-vista alpine-and-storm-cloud-and-mountain-pass cathedral-of-nature-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to bliss and grace 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.