Sturdy Sash 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.

Arabic shāsh, muslin-strip-or-turban-cloth. As a color modifier, sash implies a wound-strip-and-cummerbund-and-bandolier quality, the visual register of Mughal-cummerbund-and-Spanish-fajín-sash hand-wound-strip-and-cummerbund-and-bandolier Mughal-cummerbund-and-Spanish-fajín-sash-and-Ottoman-sash sash-and-wound-strip-and-cummerbund surfaces under Mughal-cummerbund-and-Spanish-fajín-sash-and-Ottoman-sash Mughal-Delhi-and-Iberian-and-Ottoman-Topkapi wound-cloth-light. Sits at the modifier-and-textile end of the grid, parallel to kilt and shawl 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.