Sturdy Ergo Ruby

Old French estourdi, stunned, reckless — drifted in English to mean robust, well-built. Used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as durable and unfussy — the working browns of saddle leather, the working greens of pasture wool. Sits in the bold-and-warm corner alongside robust and solid.

Latin ergo, therefore-or-thus. As a color modifier, ergo implies a Latin-logical-and-cogito-ergo-sum quality, the visual register of Cartesian-cogito-ergo-sum hand-Latin-logical-and-cogito-ergo-sum Cartesian-cogito-ergo-sum-and-Scholastic-syllogism ergo-and-Latin-logical-and-cogito-ergo-sum surfaces under Cartesian-cogito-ergo-sum-and-Scholastic-syllogism Sorbonne-Scholastic-and-Cartesian-meditation logical-deduction-light. Sits at the modifier-and-Latin end of the grid, parallel to ipse and opus 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.