Punchy Glee Ruby

A modern adjectival form of punch, to strike sharply. Used as a color word since the early twentieth century for hues that read as highly contrasting and visually loud. Punchy red, punchy yellow: the implication is full saturation combined with optical impact. Sits across the bold and bright buckets, near vivid and striking.

Old English glēo, music-or-merriment. As a color modifier, glee implies a singing-and-merry-and-bubbling quality, the visual register of Elizabethan-glee-club-and-madrigal-glee hand-singing-and-merry-and-bubbling Elizabethan-glee-club-and-madrigal-and-catch-singing gleeful-and-singing-and-merry-and-bubbling surfaces under Elizabethan-glee-club-and-madrigal-and-catch-singing parlor-and-tavern-and-court candlelit-music-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to mirth and merry in usage.

From the Latin ruber — simply, red. The gemstone is a chromium-tinged corundum, harder than anything in nature except diamond, and so saturated that a fine Burmese pigeon's blood ruby at auction outpaces a comparable diamond by weight. The color borrows the gem's confidence: a clear, glassy red without the brown of garnet or the blue of crimson.