Printers needed a technical term for this color which they wanted to distinguish from common blue pigments used in painting so they pulled the Greek word for blue.
It shouldn’t be used to refer to a broader color category, and definitely should not be used to refer to blue–green colors. For that stick to blue–green, greenish blue, or teal.
Similarly magenta is a colorful moderately purplish red color, again of medium lightness (named for a famously bloody battle). Again printers adopted this as a technical term because it is a bit different than the “red” pigments commonly used in painting.
The names “cyan” and “magenta” really should not be used to refer to additive mixtures like sRGB #00FFFF or #FF00FF. These colors are unrecognizably far away from printing ink colors.
Printers needed a technical term for this color which they wanted to distinguish from common blue pigments used in painting so they pulled the Greek word for blue.
It shouldn’t be used to refer to a broader color category, and definitely should not be used to refer to blue–green colors. For that stick to blue–green, greenish blue, or teal.
Similarly magenta is a colorful moderately purplish red color, again of medium lightness (named for a famously bloody battle). Again printers adopted this as a technical term because it is a bit different than the “red” pigments commonly used in painting.
The names “cyan” and “magenta” really should not be used to refer to additive mixtures like sRGB #00FFFF or #FF00FF. These colors are unrecognizably far away from printing ink colors.