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mother-of-pearl
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Mother-of-pearl

Mother-of-pearl \Moth"er-of-pearl`\, n. (Zo["o]l.) The hard, iridescent, pearly internal layer of several kinds of shells, esp. of pearl oysters, river mussels, and the abalone shells; nacre. See Pearl.

Wiktionary
mother-of-pearl

a. Made from or looking like mother-of-pearl; iridescent or pearly. n. The hard pearly inner layer of certain mollusk shells; nacre.

WordNet
mother-of-pearl

n. the iridescent internal layer of a mollusk shell [syn: nacre]

Usage examples of "mother-of-pearl".

It was of the sweetest fruitwood, and it was cut slim-waisted and curled, and it had inlays of mother-of-pearl in the shapes of hearts and roses and twining vines and little mourning doves.

The nameboard was decorated with a thin, elegant line of mother-of-pearl, curling at each end into a bouquet of flowers.

He remembered the board clearly-a splendid thing of ebony and olivewood, with inlays of mother-of-pearl and semiprecious stones set around the edges.

Alroy and Javan jointly by a southern baron, was a Cardounet board made of ebony and olivewood, inlaid around the edges with mother-of-pearl and semiprecious gems.

The sudden movement of her body thus occasioned, shook off her lap a little mother-of-pearl bodkin case, which lay more than half out of one of the pockets of her apron.

First she smelled the jacket and the vest while she took the watch chain out of the buttonhole and removed the pencil holder and the billfold and the loose change from the pockets and placed everything on the dresser, and then she smelled the hemmed shirt as she removed the tiepin and the topaz cuff links and the gold collar button, and then she smelled the trousers as she removed the keyholder with its eleven keys and the penknife with its mother-of-pearl handle, and finally she smelled the underwear and the socks and the linen handkerchief with the embroidered monogram.

There were no ordinary chairs, but rather satin-covered chaises, and handcarved Roman couches, tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl, cabinets of rosewood, and armoires of ebony.

He ushered them in, and Hester could not help glancing around the perfectly proportioned hallway with its black-and-white flagged floor leading to a magnificent staircase, and the walls hung with ancient armor, decorated swords, and flintlocks, stocks inlaid with gold wire and mother-of-pearl.

Centipede lovingly polished the horse roundels of mother-of-pearl inlay on the copper-and-gold-flecked lacquered ground of the scabbard.

Leaning over the railing, we are glad we put on our mother-of-pearl headbands this morning, and our dresses of blue stonewashed silk.

Fingernails that gleam like mother-of-pearl strike strings, ripple chords and arpeggios into the perfumed air as he weaves a spell of timelessness and eternity.

Her mother wore a navy cloche, the silver roll of her hair caught beneath it with mother-of-pearl combs.

I looked down, hardly able to believe my senses, at a vast sunken bath of jade, encrusted with ornaments of chrysolite, sardonyx, mother-of-pearl, gems I had never seen in all the bazaars of Berb-Kisheh.

It came from the substance of the Mountain itself, which glowed and faded in a slow breathlike rhythm, with a mother-of-pearl radiance.

Monplaisir was a tremendous but exquisitely delicate structure, comprising mainly great expanses of window, in which the multitude of panes were of "moon glass" that reflected rainbows in all the pastel colors of mother-of-pearl.