Velvety Hut Crimson

An adjectival form of velvet, used since the eighteenth century for colors that read as if they had the matte light-absorbing quality of velvet. Implies high saturation combined with a non-glossy surface — the matte richness of a deep wine in a fabric rather than in a glass. Sits in the bold-and-deep corner of the grid alongside plush and lush.

Old French hutte, small-shelter. As a color modifier, hut implies a one-room-shelter quality, the visual register of Mongolian-and-Highland small one-room timber-and-stone-and-felt nomadic-and-settled shelter surfaces under remote-and-windswept Mongolian-steppe-and-Scottish-Highland one-room shelter light. Sits at the modifier-and-place end of the grid, parallel to tent and lodge in usage.

From the Old Spanish cremesin, itself from the Arabic qirmiz — the kermes scale insect, dried and ground into a brilliant carmine dye prized in the medieval Mediterranean. For centuries the most expensive red on a draper's shelf, reserved for cardinals, kings, and the cloth that gave English the word crimson. Cooler than scarlet, deeper than rose; the color of pomegranate seeds and a serious occasion.