Word.ws English Dictionary

chatoyant

US/ʃəˈtɔɪ.ənt/

chatoyant adjective: having a certain optical reflectance effect, which can be likened to the sheen of a spool of silk.

chatoyant: having a certain optical reflectance effect, which can be likened to the sheen of a spool of silk
Image: Mitchell Gore ( Lestatdelc, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Adjective

chatoyant (comparative more chatoyant, superlative most chatoyant)

  1. Having a certain optical reflectance effect, which can be likened to the sheen of a spool of silk.
    • chatoyant effect
    • I managed to move sufficiently to see at the top, as I fired up the stairs, the yellow face of Dr. Fu-Manchu, to see the gleaming, chatoyant eyes, greenly terrible, as they sought to pierce the gloom.1913, Sax Rohmer, chapter XXIII, in The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu

Noun

chatoyant (plural chatoyants)

  1. A hard stone, such as the cat's-eye, which presents on a polished surface, and in the interior, an undulating or wavy light.

chatoyant meaning in Urdu

chatoyant in Urdu

chatoyant
چمکیلا camkīlā

Forms of chatoyant

Adjective
comparativemore chatoyant
superlativemost chatoyant
Noun
pluralchatoyants

Origin of chatoyant

From French chatoyant, present participle of chatoyer (“to iridesce, like a cat's eye”), from chat (“cat”, because of the reflective qualities of a cat's eye).

Questions about chatoyant

What does chatoyant mean?
Chatoyant means having a certain optical reflectance effect, which can be likened to the sheen of a spool of silk.
What is chatoyant in Urdu?
Chatoyant in Urdu is چمکیلا (camkīlā). See Chatoyant meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is chatoyant?
Chatoyant can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce chatoyant?
Chatoyant is pronounced /ʃəˈtɔɪ.ənt/ (US).

Words near chatoyant in the dictionary

  1. Chatots
  2. chatoyance
  3. chatoyances
  4. chatoyancies
  5. chatoyancy
  6. chatoyant
  7. chatoyants
  8. chatoyment
  9. chatpata
  10. chatra
  11. chatras

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chatoyant (page history and authors); چمکیلا (Urdu) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-chatoyant.wav.

Cite this entry: “chatoyant.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chatoyant. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.