Monday Word: Nacreous

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

nacreous [ney-kree-uhs]

adjective
resembling mother-of-pearl; lustrous; pearly, iridescent

examples
1. This one is tough--its nacreous, butterfly shell swings shut on its hinges, small black wings locked like a mouth. "Mussels" [poem] by Lucinda Roy.

2. "Looking like a "portal to the next dimension" or possibly a spaceship, the shimmering colours of nacreous cloud were spotted. "Rare 'rainbow cloud' spotted in UK skies." BBC. 21 December 2023

origin
1590s, "type of shellfish that yields mother-of-pearl," from French nacre (Old French nacaire, 14c.), from Italian naccaro (now nacchera), possibly from Arabic naqur "hunting horn" (from nakara "to hollow out"), in reference to the shape of the mollusk shell. Meaning "mother-of-pearl" is from 1718. The French adjectival form nacré was applied in English to decorative objects iridescent like mother of pearl (1895).

May the fourth be with you!

Comments

[adafrog]

:)

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

🌌⭐

[full_metal_ox]

Death most strongly felt that, if only for artistry's sake, heroes should be made to make their exits from the stage of life in the highest melodramatic style, with only one in fifty score let to die of old age and in the bed of sleep for the object of irony. This necessity was incidentally so great that it permitted, he believed as part of his self-set rules, the use of outwardly perceptible and testifiable magic and need not be puttied over with realism, as in the case of more humdrum beings. So now for two whole heartbeats he listened only to the faint simmer of his cool mind, while lightly massaging his temples again with nacreous knuckles.

—“The Sadness of the Executioner”, by Fritz Leiber, first published in Flashing Swords #1 (1973). (Context: Death, a punch-clock functionary(1) with cosmic quotas to fulfill, needs to kill two heroes by deadline, and is preparing to teleport in assassins to dispatch Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Spoiler: they fail.)

(1) As well as an unexpectedly pretty illo-op:

Sitting on his dark-cushioned, modest throne in his low, rambling castle in the heart of the Shadowland, Death shook his pale head and pommeled a little his opalescent temples and slightly pursed his lips, which were the color of violet grapes with the silvery bloom still on, above his slender figure armored in chain mail and his black belt, studded with silver skulls tarnished almost as black, from which hung his naked, irresistible sword.

(I mentally coated David Bowie in interference powder.)

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

I think David Bowie is a good casting for this!

[prettygoodword]

This has always confused me: is mother-of-pearl itself nacreous or only things that resemble it?

[full_metal_ox]

According to Merriam-Webster:

The meaning of NACREOUS is possessing the qualities of, consisting of, or abounding in nacre; also : iridescent.

[prettygoodword]

And since mother-of-pearl is nacre, that would make it a Yes.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Hmm. I don't know. I assume yes, it is nacreous.