tēle

Teal comes from Middle English tēle, referring to the Eurasian teal (Anas crecca), a small freshwater duck. The word probably derives from a Low German or Dutch cognate — Middle Dutch teling or Middle Low German tēlink. The bird was named before the color. The color was named after the bird — specifically after the iridescent blue-green patch on the male teal's head, which runs from the eye to the nape.

The color use of teal appeared in English by 1923, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. For centuries before that, the word meant only the duck. The delay is striking — the bird had been called a teal since the fourteenth century, but it took five hundred years for the color to be named after it. Other bird-derived colors were faster: canary yellow, robin's egg blue, and flamingo pink all attached more quickly.

Teal occupies a specific place in the color spectrum: it is a cyan with more blue than green, typically described as a deep blue-green. The hex code for teal in web design is #008080 — equal parts blue and green in the RGB system, at half brightness. The Pantone system includes several teal variants. The word fills a gap between turquoise (lighter, greener) and navy (darker, bluer).

The 1990s made teal a household word. The Charlotte Hornets (NBA, 1988), the Florida Marlins (MLB, 1993), and the San Jose Sharks (NHL, 1991) all adopted teal as a primary color. The Jacksonville Jaguars (NFL, 1995) followed. Teal was everywhere in 1990s sports, and the word went from a birding term to a common color designation in about five years.