Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Exhibiting a milky iridescence like that of an opal.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Having variegated and changing colors like those of the opal.
- Milky.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Reflecting a milky or pearly light from the interior; having an opaline play of colors.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Exhibiting a milky
iridescence like that of anopal .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective having a play of lustrous rainbow colors
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word opalescent.
Examples
-
Oh – the purple blue opalescent is my fav, followed by the blue-red.
-
To the observer of the aura the term "opalescent" instinctly presents itself, for there is a striking resemblance to the opaline peculiar play of colors of delicate tints and shades in a body of pearly or milky hue.
The Human Aura Astral Colors and Thought Forms Swami Panchadasi
-
Built using curved douglas fir plywood and tubular steel, everything is delicately illuminated by an opalescent storage wall and luminous bricks.
-
And what a vision it was; the newspaper describes the sweet treat thus: "The bean, of red and gold, has an opalescent beauty, like some piece of ancient amber."
April Daniels Hussar: The 10 Craziest Moments of Royal Wedding Frenzy Yet April Daniels Hussar 2011
-
An arrangement of peacock feather tips decorated the top of the canopy, and white feather trimming cascaded down each of the columns into a pool of opalescent and white round glass ornaments resembling oversized pearls.
My Fair Wedding David Tutera 2011
-
The core is white, white, and a flicker of blue, opalescent, unimaginable -
Places You Haunt stringmonkey 2009
-
And where is the miraculous, opalescent thing of beauty headed next?
April Daniels Hussar: The 10 Craziest Moments of Royal Wedding Frenzy Yet April Daniels Hussar 2011
-
And where is the miraculous, opalescent thing of beauty headed next?
April Daniels Hussar: The 10 Craziest Moments of Royal Wedding Frenzy Yet April Daniels Hussar 2011
-
Mountains of fresh cucumbers, radishes, and green onions, whole heads of romaine, and delicate, opalescent peeled white onions.
Day of Honey Annia Ciezadlo 2011
-
And what a vision it was; the newspaper describes the sweet treat thus: "The bean, of red and gold, has an opalescent beauty, like some piece of ancient amber."
April Daniels Hussar: The 10 Craziest Moments of Royal Wedding Frenzy Yet April Daniels Hussar 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word opalescent
"It brightened; the sky turned to a glowing pink which I strove, glueing my eyes to the window, to see more clearly, for I felt that it was related somehow to the most intimate life of Nature, but, the course of the line altering, the train turned, the morning scene gave place in the frame of the window to a nocturnal village, its roofs still blue with moonlight, its pond encrusted with the opalescent sheen of night, beneath a firmament still spangled with all its stars, and I was lamenting the loss of my strip of pink sky when I caught sight of it anew, but red this time, in the opposite window which it left at a second bend in the line; so that I spent my time running from one window to the other to reassemble, to collect on a single canvas the intermittent, antipodean fragments of my fine, scarlet, ever-changing morning, and to obtain a comprehensive view and a continuous picture of it."
-- Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, Revised by D.J. Enright, p 317 of the Modern Library paperback edition
April 26, 2008