Teal

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Pronunciation: /tiːl/

Definitions

1. A blue-green color, like that of certain ducks' wing patches or shallow tropical waters
2. A greenish-blue hue often associated with various aquatic environments and certain bird species' characteristics
3. A shade between blue and green, commonly seen in nature and used in design aesthetics

Etymology: The bird came before the colour. "Teal" was first the name of a small dabbling duck, and the Middle English "tele" that gave us the word was used for that bird long before anyone named a shade after it. The word probably descends from an unrecorded Old English form, and its relatives survive in West Frisian, Middle Dutch and Middle Low German, all words for the same duck. Its ultimate origin is unknown, and it has no cognates outside the Germanic languages. The colour name is much more recent. It is attested from 1923, when "teal" was applied to a dark greenish-blue resembling the patterning on the head and wings of the male teal duck. The shade took its name from the plumage, not the other way round. In Australian politics, the word took on a new role. Teal is intermediate between green, the colour associated with environmentalism, and blue, the colour of the conservative Liberal Party, and so it became the label for a group of independent candidates who sit between those two camps.

Synonyms: blue-green, cyan