Word.ws English Dictionary

mother of pearl

mother of pearl is the alternative form 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

Forms of mother of pearl

pluralmother of pearls

Questions about mother of pearl

What is mother of pearl the alternative form of?
Mother of pearl is the alternative form of mother-of-pearl.

Words near mother of pearl in the dictionary

  1. mother of chapel
  2. mother of coal
  3. Mother of God
  4. Mother of Mercy
  5. mother of millions
  6. mother of pearl
  7. mother of pearls
  8. Mother of Presidents
  9. mother of Satan
  10. Mother of Sorrows
  11. mother of the nation

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mother of pearl (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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Cite this entry: “mother of pearl.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mother_of_pearl. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.