Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Mother-of-pearl.
- Having an iridescence resembling that of mother-of-pearl; nacreous: a French word applied in English to decorative objects: as, nacré porcelain.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective (Art) Having the peculiar iridescence of nacre, or mother-of-pearl, or an iridescence resembling it.
- noun (Zoöl.) A pearly substance which lines the interior of many shells, and is most perfect in the mother-of-pearl.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the iridescent internal layer of a mollusk shell
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The animal then secretes a calcium substance called nacre to protect itself.
Boutique Week: Boutique of the Week: Bourdage Pearls, Chicago Boutique Week 2011
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The particle is an irritant, which causes the oyster to produce a lacquer-like substance called nacre.
Daily Readings from Love Your Life Victoria Osteen 2011
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The animal then secretes a calcium substance called nacre to protect itself.
Boutique Week: Boutique of the Week: Bourdage Pearls, Chicago Boutique Week 2011
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The animal then secretes a calcium substance called nacre to protect itself.
Boutique Week: Boutique of the Week: Bourdage Pearls, Chicago Boutique Week 2011
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The particle is an irritant, which causes the oyster to produce a lacquer-like substance called nacre.
Daily Readings from Love Your Life Victoria Osteen 2011
-
The animal then secretes a calcium substance called nacre to protect itself.
Boutique Week: Boutique of the Week: Bourdage Pearls, Chicago Boutique Week 2011
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The animal then secretes a calcium substance called nacre to protect itself.
The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com Boutique Week 2011
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Three decades earlier, Kokichi Mikimoto, the son of a noodle maker in Toba, Japan, had perfected a method to culture pearls, the process by which a bead or piece of mantle tissue is implanted inside the fleshy part of a mollusk, forcing the creature to secrete an iridescent substance called nacre that forms a pearl.
NYT > Home Page By VICTORIA GOMELSKY 2010
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The inside shells of oysters and other shell-forming mollusks are covered with a shiny, lustrous substance called nacre, or mother-of-pearl.
unknown title 2009
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Natural pearls are born quite by chance when the oyster can’t get rid of some particle inside and coats it with layer upon layer of a smooth, hard substance called nacre.
Willow V.C. Andrews 2002
mollusque commented on the word nacre
As history unveiled itself in the new order, man's mind had behaved like a young pearl oyster, secreting its universe to suit its conditions until it had built up a shell of nacre that embodied all its notions of the perfect.
The Education of Henry Adams, 1906
November 8, 2007