opalescent

1. 1.

   having a play of lustrous rainbow colors

   “an iridescent oil slick”

   “nacreous (or pearlescent) clouds looking like mother-of-pearl”

   “a milky opalescent (or opaline) luster”

   Synonymsiridescentnacreousopalinepearlescent

   Similarbright

Questions about opalescent

What does opalescent mean?

opalescent means "having a play of lustrous rainbow colors".

How many syllables are in opalescent?

opalescent has 4 syllables: o-pa-le-scent. The stress falls on "pa".

What is another word for opalescent?

Close synonyms include iridescent, nacreous, opaline, pearlescent. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is opalescent a common word?

opalescent is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.