glaucous

Eight letters, five sounds, and two separate places where the writing and the saying part company. Every one of the six spellings filed here is a reasonable answer to one of them.

Covered in a fine blue-grey waxy bloom that rubs off under a thumb. The bloom on a plum, on a red cabbage leaf, on a eucalyptus twig.

Greek glaukos meant bluish grey and also gleaming, and it is old: Homer calls Athena glaukopis, grey-eyed. Latin took it as glaucus and English kept the Latin spelling intact, au and all. The same root gives glaucoma, named for the grey clouding of the eye.