Cyan is a bright, greenish-blue color that sits between blue and green on the color spectrum. If you've ever looked at a tropical ocean on a sunny day or seen the bright blue-green of a swimming pool, you've seen cyan.

You might recognize cyan from computer screens and printers. When you print something in color, your printer uses four ink colors: cyan, magenta (a bright pink), yellow, and black. These four colors can combine to create almost any other color you can imagine. Graphic designers and artists work with cyan all the time, adjusting how much they use to get exactly the shade they want.

The word cyan can work as both a noun (referring to the color itself) and an adjective (describing something that is cyan-colored). You might say “The artist used cyan in the sky” or “She painted the walls a beautiful cyan shade.” Scientists and engineers use the term cyan precisely because it identifies a specific wavelength of light, making it more exact than simply saying “blue-green.”