Glaucous -- Vocabulary from The Glass Room

In between snow shoveling, pounding ice out of the gutter downspouts, and chipping away at ice dams on the roof, I've begun reading Simon Mawer's novel, The Glass Room. It's clearly a book full of vocabulary gems, which I'll make a point to mine along the way. My first fun find: glaucous.

The term means, according to the dictionary in the Kindle on which I'm reading the novel:
1. of a dull grayish-green or blue color.
2. covered with a powdery bloom like that on grapes.

The word's ultimate root is the Greek glaukos meaning "bluish-green" or "bluish-gray." This root is shared by glaucoma, the medical term for a gradual loss of sight due to increased pressure on the eyeball, which can be marked by a gray-green haze in the pupil.

Usage of glaucous in the novel is in reference to a model of a pavilion that the modernist architect Ranier von Abt has designed and is now showing off to his new acquaintances and perhaps potential clients:

The colours of the model were those that von Abt had extolled in their voyage down from Saint Mark's: ethereal white, glaucous pearl, glistening chrome.

It sounds cold but lovely to me.