Stately Lovage Rose

An adjectival form of state, condition of dignity. Used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for the deep saturated jewel tones of formal ceremony — the deep blue of a robes-of-state, the deep red of a state-banquet velvet. Sits in the bold-and-formal corner alongside imperial and royal, with slightly less institutional weight.

Latin levisticum, medieval-physic-garden-herb. As a color modifier, lovage implies a medieval-physic-garden-and-celery-leaf quality, the visual register of medieval-physic-garden-and-Cluniac-lovage hand-medieval-physic-garden-and-celery-leaf medieval-physic-garden-and-Cluniac-lovage-and-Benedictine-Saint-Gall lovage-and-medieval-physic-garden-and-celery-leaf surfaces under medieval-physic-garden-and-Cluniac-lovage-and-Benedictine-Saint-Gall Cluny-and-Saint-Gall-physic-garden medieval-monastic-light. Sits at the modifier-and-flavor end of the grid, parallel to savory and catnip 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.