Word.ws English Dictionary

mother-of-pearls

mother-of-pearls is the plural of mother-of-pearl.

Meaning of mother-of-pearl

Noun

mother-of-pearl (countable and uncountable, plural mother-of-pearls)

  1. The hard pearly inner layer of certain mollusk shells; nacre.
    • Ah, those Indian warehouses made the morning pass in a charming manner! many a soft confession was whispered over a huge china jar; many a heart has succumbed to a suite of mother-of-pearl card-box and counters; and as to the shawls, why, the whole feminine world has long ago acknowledged them to...1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “Another London Life”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 170
  2. A butterfly of the genus Salamis.
  3. A butterfly of the species Patania ruralis.

See all 4 meanings of mother-of-pearl

Questions about mother-of-pearls

What is mother-of-pearls the plural of?
Mother-of-pearls is the plural of mother-of-pearl.

Words near mother-of-pearls in the dictionary

  1. mother-lodes
  2. mother-naked
  3. mother-of-pearl
  4. mother-of-pearl cloud
  5. mother-of-pearl clouds
  6. mother-of-pearls
  7. mother-of-thyme
  8. mother-out-law
  9. mother-spot
  10. mother-spots
  11. mother-to-be

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mother-of-pearls (page history and authors); mother-of-pearl (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.

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