nacreous cloud
- noun
- /ˈneɪkərəs klaʊd/
- Specialized
:
nube nacarada
- As the sun dipped below the horizon, the sky was painted with beautiful nacreous clouds that shimmered with iridescence.
Examples
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In Antarctica, the nacreous clouds are a stunning sight, appearing high in the atmosphere during winter months.
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And nacreous clouds will start to form a lot more.
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I stood in awe as the nacreous clouds glowed softly at twilight, reflecting colors like a pearl in the fading light.
Synonyms
A high cloud that looks shiny with rainbow colors around sunrise or after sunset
How Iridescent
- Specialized
1
8.3
Surface Forms
Morphology
If a learner knows 'nacreous' as 'having a lustrous, mother-of-pearl quality' and 'cloud' as an atmospheric mass, they can infer an iridescent or pearly-looking cloud from the adjective+noun composition. However, the phrase also names a specific high-altitude, twilight-visible meteorological phenomenon with technical properties not entailed by the constituents, so the full sense is not completely predictable.
Etymology
Nacreous cloud The name nacreous cloud comes from nacreous, which comes from the word 'nacre' for the shiny inside of a pearl. These clouds are high in the sky and, when the sun is just below the horizon, they catch the light and look pearly, rainbow colours, so the name now means a bright, pearl-like cloud.