Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Iridescence   Listen
noun
Iridescence  n.  Exhibition of colors like those of the rainbow, especially a surface reflection which changes color with the angle at which the object is viewed; the quality or state of being iridescent; a prismatic play of color; as, the iridescence of mother-of-pearl. It is due to interference of light waves reflected from the front and back surfaces of a thin layer transpatrent or semitransparent film.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Iridescence" Quotes from Famous Books



... I also attended, and was well repaid for going. Near the entrance of the tent was a large cage, peopled with the gayest denizens of tropic life, macaws, cockatoos, paroquets—what know I?—a feathered iridescence, that sulked prehensile or perched paradisiacal in their iron house. Two youths entered; one paused admiringly. 'Come along, Jack,' remonstrated the other, hurrying him on by the arm, 'them darned things is only painted.' He wasn't going to see his friend imposed upon and his admiration ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... tables, Larssen was struck with her increasing animation and gaiety. The heavy, listless look had left her eyes, and they now glittered with life and fire. When they left the tables to stroll by the milk-white terraces of the Casino, there was a flush in her cheeks and iridescence in her speech very different from a couple ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... to the effect of sunlight and shadow. If you keep your shadows cool, your lights will be the richer and more sparkling because of that contrast. If you want more strength in a note of color, get its complement as near it as you can. Look for their iridescence of edges of shadow, and of the contours of objects. You will get greater relief of light and shade by contrast of warm and cool than contrast ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

... with a scintillating iridescence, up on the ceiling, not eight feet from where I sat. As I looked the spot grew, and spread, and flared out. It was blue like the elusive blue of the gem; only, it was more like flame—the flame ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... in itself disappointment; it is not what it expected to be; and it finds nothing which confronts it quite, if at all, responsive to the inward vision. The greatest, the loveliest things in the world lose their iridescence or dwindle before it. The old come to things measurably prepared to see them as they are, take them for what they are worth; but the young are the prey of impassioned prepossessions which can ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... the very birds that haunt them; for, instead of the restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the bleak upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle among the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their living plumes, changing at every motion, with the tints, hardly less lovely, that have stood unchanged ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... of a well whose walls were of that same green vaporous iridescence through which we had just come, but finer grained, compact; as though here the corpuscles of which they were woven were far closer spun. Thousands of feet above us the mighty cylinder uprose, and in the lessened circle that was its mouth I glimpsed the bright stars; and knew by this it opened ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... small humming began, from some point overhead. It wavered and shrilled and mounted in intensity, and then fell to a steady monotone. The dome about him flickered with a queer, cold iridescence, and slowly vanished. The hidden room vanished, and he was looking into the shadowy interior of a deserted barn. The barn vanished; blue sky appeared above, streaked with wisps of high cirrus cloud. The autumn landscape flickered unreally. Buildings appeared and vanished, ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper

... the petals of long-dead roses rustle through the winding passages, where the windows are hung with cobwebs, greyed at last from iridescence to despairing shadows, a barrier may fall at the sound of a talismanic name, for the hands of women are small and slow to build and the hearts of women are tender beyond ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... Katharine, to feel what I can't express? And the things I can give there's no use in my giving. Trust me, Katharine," he added hastily, "I won't speak of it again. But in the presence of beauty—look at the iridescence round the moon!—one feels—one feels—Perhaps if you married me—I'm half a poet, you see, and I can't pretend not to feel what I do feel. If I could write—ah, that would be another matter. I shouldn't bother you to marry me ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... matter was the effect of the piercing of the Suez Canal upon coastwise trade in the Mediterranean, but it is profane to bring before the general gaze a title which can tell the world nothing of the iridescence and ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... at night, looked at through the meshes of a handkerchief, show diffraction phenomena. The diffraction effects obtained in looking through a bird's feathers are, as shown by Schwerd, very brilliant. The iridescence of certain Alpine clouds is also an effect of diffraction which may be imitated by the spores of Lycopodium. When shaken over a glass plate these spores cause a point of light, looked at through the dusted plate, to be surrounded by ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... she was well paid not to. Well paid! He'd done his part. More than nine out of ten would have done. Been made a jay of, if the truth was known. She was a Christmas-tree bauble and was expected to throw off holiday iridescence. There were limits! ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... her features were rigid, the woman's glance spoke to Baldur, spoke eloquently. Her eyes were—or was it the iris?—symbols of a soul-state, of a rare emotion, not of sex, nor yet sexless. The pupils seemed powdered with a strange iridescence. He became more troubled than before. What did the curious creature want of him! She was neither coquette nor cocotte, flirtation was not hinted by her intense expression. He resumed his former position, but her eyes made his shoulders burn, as if they had sufficient power to bore through them. He ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... out of the companionway the next morning she winced and shut her eyes. The whole arc of heaven seemed hung with fire-opals; east, west, north and south, whichever way she looked, there was dazzling iridescence. The long flowing swells ran into the very sky, for there was visible no horizon. Gold-leaf and opals, thought Elsa. What a wonderful world! What a versatile mistress was nature! Never two days alike, ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath



Words linked to "Iridescence" :   iridesce, opalescence, brightness, iridescent



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com