Confident Sagittarius Rose

A late-Latin participle, confidens, trusting — borrowed into English in the sixteenth century. As a color modifier, confident implies saturation combined with poise: a confident red doesn't try too hard, just sits at the level of its hue without overreaching. Sits in the bold-bucket center near bold and resolute.

Latin sagittarius, archer-of-the-zodiac. As a color modifier, sagittarius implies a centaur-archer-and-fire-sign-and-Jupiter-ruled-mutable-fire quality, the visual register of Hellenic-Sagittarius-and-Chiron-centaur-archer hand-centaur-archer-and-fire-sign-and-Jupiter-ruled-mutable-fire Hellenic-Sagittarius-and-Chiron-centaur-archer-and-galactic-center sagittarius-and-centaur-archer-and-fire-sign surfaces under Hellenic-Sagittarius-and-Chiron-centaur-archer-and-galactic-center late-autumn-and-November-and-December mutable-fire-sign-light. Sits at the modifier-and-zodiac end of the grid, parallel to scorpio and capricorn 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.