Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Consisting of, resembling, or pertaining to nacre or mother-of-pearl: as, a nacreous luster; a nacreous layer.
- Producing or possessing nacre, as shells which have a certain luster or lustrous layer on their inner surface.
- In bacteriology, applied to colonies which are of a translucent, grayish-white color with a pearly luster.
Wiktionary
- adj. Of, or resembling nacre (mother of pearl).
- adj. Exhibiting lustrous or rainbow-like colors.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. (Zoöl.) Consisting of, or resembling, nacre; pearly.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. consisting of or resembling mother-of-pearl
- adj. having a play of lustrous rainbow colors
Examples
“Unofficial Neal Asher drinking game: take a shot whenever he uses the words "nacreous" or "actinic.”
“There are other ways you can “get nacreous,” however, and thereby jump start the creative process and become the world-famous writer you've always wanted to be.”
“If, despite having your pencils lined up and a fresh piece of paper in your typewriter, or a cool white computer screen in front of you, you find yourself unable to write, it may be because you're not nacreous enough.”
“I am worth more, for it is I who bring them forth, sing them forth - luminous nacreous spheres tumbling forth, scattering on the ground.”
“That same wind sundered the clouds to reveal a swollen, pocked moon, and a shaft of nacreous moonglow doused the ground before my feet.”
“Her legs were encased in a sickly green, nacreous material that was solid from the knees down, breaking apart into a delicate lace patterning over her thighs and waist.”
“The parking lot is full, the grass is covered with cars, there are even cars out on the street, everywhere there are cars, and in each car are people sheened with sweat, going nacreous as onions fried in butter; I can see through their clammy melting skin to the dry dusty dust of their bones.”
“As if to correct the one or the other, he thrust his tongue into the nacreous coils of her ear, smothering all the while her breasts with his hands, lest their rocking motion somehow interfere with the process of correction.”
“In places the shale had flaked away giving the tower a mottled appearance; black nacreous scales littered the base of the walls and gleamed among the grasses.”
“More on nacreous or polar stratospheric clouds, link.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘nacreous’.
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Visuals
A list of words which yield surprising, beautiful, amusing, or otherwise noteworthy images here on Wordnik.
photochrom, fufluns, thank you, cool l..., postcard, picture postcard, cricket, physiological ill..., Gakuryū Ishii, ametropia, One Froggy Evening, rhodopsin, Santiago Calatrava and 636 more...
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Gene Wolfe
Please contribute your favorite words from any of Gene Wolfe’s books to this prize-winning list.
In case you come across words in this list which are too commonplace to fit in, please ...gallipot, roost, badelaire, oblesque, execration, dhole, amschaspand, arctother, chalcedony, penitence, asimi, autarch and 839 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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phrontistery - n
from phrontistery.info
nymphology, nympholepsy, nyctophobia, nymphean, nyctograph, nyctanthous, nyctalopia, nychthemeral, nutricial, nutrice, nutrication, nychthemeron and 340 more...
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molluscs
very comprehensive list
of molluscs,who does not like
calamari? hmm yum
molluscigerous
100,000 species just in molluscsabalone, ammonite, argonaut, ataata, belon, bivalve, blackhead, bluepoint, brachiopod, buckie, byssal, byssus and 271 more...
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wallace
Remington, Windsor, prorector, wen, aver, mottle, seltzer, tepee, lapidary, effete, sotto, presbyopia and 355 more...
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Clouds
We owe our current names for clouds to Luke Howard. Wikipedia tells us that "Howard was not the first to attempt a classification of clouds—Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) had earlier proposed a ...
wane-cloud, stratus, cirrostratus, cirro-stratus, strato-cirrus, altostratus, salmon-cloud, cumulus, altocumulus lenti..., sonder-cloud, rain-cloud, nimbostratus and 205 more...
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A Time of Gifts
lambent, gonfalon, ait, eyrie, haberdashery, belfry, capstan, spinney, barbican, hobnail, wharf, waterlogged and 64 more...
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color, light & sight
albedo, chromatography, chromatic, tone, penumbra, superluminal, diaphanous, iridescent, amethyst, opalescent, celadon, lapis and 35 more...
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Colors
cerise, carnelian, florid, claret, watchet, rosaceous, coquelicot, vermilion, celadon, nacreous, lapis, viridescent and 132 more...
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Good Words
fenestering, cetic, immanent, quickening, archetypal, shibboleth, soma, wetware, heritable, Apotheosis, halcyon, cellar door and 482 more...
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Pynchon
Words and contexts looked up while reading Gravity's Rainbow
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New words
Words that are new to me.
autostrada, gimlet, clyster, gravida, skelped, nacreous, susurrus, intransigent, puissant, turbid, plangent, fungible and 99 more...
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dark and bright words of shine and fi...
scotophil, scotoma, scotia, shed, shadow, shade, scone, whiting, edelweiss, light, lightning, lucina and 349 more...
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NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
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Hitch Words
Words from the lexicon of Christopher Hitchens
propinquity, fratricide, factitious, vitiate, sectarianism, ostensible, atavistic, sephardic, doyen, palpable, encephalitic, fastidious and 188 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for nacreous.
jessielauren Lolita - We ( mother, Haze, Dolores and I) were to go to our Glass Lake this afternoon, and bathe, and bask, a nacreous morn degenerated at noon into rain, and Lo made a scene. Jan 27, 2010
chained_bear "Standing there he saw the sun go down, the sky turn nacreous so that the roofs beyond the court took on the sharpness of a silhouette: the pallor deepened to an exquisite violet; the outlines vanished, lights appeared..." --Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate, 366 Feb 9, 2008