Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🦪 Collecting pearls 💧 Forming beads 🌾 Polishing grains
pearling

pearling

7.1
Small round drops of water that form on a surface
  • noun
translation icon : perlas
  • The surface of the glass was pearling with moisture from the cold drink inside.

Examples

  • She admired the pearling of dew on the petals of the flowers in the morning sun.

  • After the rain, I noticed small drops of water pearling on the leaves of the plants.

  • So it's a really dense, small pearled color, and I'm going to use it just to build up a little bit of intensity.

  • I'm going to leave some clumps of baking soda because they're going to act as like pearls or beads.

  • Heikki winced, the sweat pearling on her body—this was the part one always forgot, the damp heat of the afternoon—and heard Djuro swear under his breath.

    Fiction book (1990)

Synonyms

spattering
vspearling
1 5.5

Small drops of liquid that hit a surface

forms small rounded beads on a surface without being splashed

How Beaded

pearling
7.1
wetness
9 1.0
dampness
8 1.0
dryness
8 1.0

Surface Forms

pearling singular
pearling plural

Morphology

pearling = pearl (semi-transparent) = pearl + ing

The bead-like image of droplets is fairly clear, but the exact surface-process sense is a metaphorical extension rather than a fully literal combination.

Etymology

The word pearling comes from pearl, a 'small round jewel'. Imagining tiny drops forming like little pearls makes it easy to see why we call the beads of moisture on leaves or glass 'pearling'.