Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Having the color and iridescence of an opal; milky-white like an opal.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The next morning we came in view of Suakim, the city of white coral, with her surf-beaten opalesque reefs stretching as far as the eye could follow.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 Various

  • "A study of color" indeed -- a study in wonderful harmonies of vivid blues and opalesque pinks, amethysts and greens, indigoes and lakes, all the gem-like tints breaking up into sparkling fragments every moment, to reset themselves the next instant in

    Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. Various

  • The soft padding of unseen feet, the rustling of leaves and grasses to the passage of fierce beasts, the sheen of opalesque eyes flaming through the dark, the million sounds which proclaimed the teeming life that one might hear and scent, though seldom see, constituted the appeal of the nocturnal jungle to Tarzan.

    Jungle Tales of Tarzan 1919

  • Houston sat for a long time, visualizing her there on the brow of the hill, her head with its long-visored cap tilted, her hand upraised, her trimness and her beauty silhouetted against the opalesque sky, dreaming, -- and with a bit of heartache in it.

    The White Desert Courtney Ryley Cooper 1913

  • The moon, in its first quarter, shone out above a distant steeple where the eastern sky, already blue and opalesque, promised the dawn of another day in reparation for the one then dying in scarlet splendour.

    Robert Orange Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange John Oliver Hobbes 1886

  • Gained as an unintentional wooer of women by dint of an opalesque smile, a mellifluous voice, a successful name, and a handsome albeit swarthy and sodden appearance which made him, for them at least, a semi-deluctable presence, and years of venial sensual licentiousness, a recompense for empathic suffering in his thoughtful studies of prostitutes and injustices of the world at large, it was his inveterate perspective of himself as delusionary as it may have been.

    An Apostate: Nawin of Thais

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  • From the OED:

    (a.) Resembling an opal in colour or iridescence; opalescent.

    1891 J. W. LINTON Catoninetales 43

    What strange reflections doth he make? How opalesque his eyes!

    June 29, 2007