chatoyant: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for December 12 is:

chatoyant \shuh-TOY-unt\ adjective
: having a changeable luster or color with an undulating narrow band of white light

Example sentence:
The chest was opened to reveal a veritable treasure of glittering gold jewelry and chatoyant gems.

Did you know?
The complex structure of a cat's eye not only enables it to see at night but also gives it the appearance of glowing in the dark. Not surprisingly, jewels that sport a healthy luster are often compared with the feline ocular organ, so much that the term "cat's-eye" is used to refer to those gems (such as chalcedony) that give off iridescence from within. If you've brushed up on your French lately, you might notice that the French word for "cat" ("chat") provides the first four letters of "chatoyant," a word used by jewelers to describe such lustrous gems. "Chatoyant" derives from the present participle of "chatoyer," a French verb that literally means "to shine like a cat's eyes."

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