Word.ws English Dictionary

shagreen

Syllables: sha·greenUK/ʃəˈɡɹiːn/

shagreen noun: an untanned leather, often dyed green; originally made from horse skin, today mostly made from the skin of a shark or ray.

shagreen: an untanned leather, often dyed green; originally made from horse skin, today mostly made from the...
Image: P.j.alfaiate, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

shagreen (countable and uncountable, plural shagreens)

  1. An untanned leather, often dyed green; originally made from horse skin, today mostly made from the skin of a shark or ray.
    • The following day the treasures of the mysterious tower came pouring in: pictures, statues, gems, shells, china, stuffed beasts and birds, tables, vases, petrifactions, arms, mandarins, &c. &c.; and among them the shagreen skin, with the injunction, "Sell it for any thing—nothing—give it away...1832, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Heath's Book of Beauty, 1833, The Talisman, page 80
    • On the old lecturn or reading-stand which he used for his heavier tomes, The Testaments of Carnamagos, in its covers of shagreen with hasps of human bone, lay open at the very page which had frightened him so unreasonably with its eldritch intimations.August 1935, Clark Ashton Smith, Weird Tales, "The Treader of the Dust"
  2. A rough or spiny surface of an insect's cuticle.
    • If the shagreen dots be carefully observed they will be found to possess an annular arrangement.1883 November 7, Edward B. Poulton, “Notes upon, or suggested hy, the colours, markings, and protective attitudes of certain lepidopterous larvæ and pupæ, and of a phytophagous hymenopterous larva”...
    • The shagreen of the abdominal tergites generally consists of small spinules, singly or in caudally convex arcs.1985, “The Immature Chironomids of the Eastern United States VI. Pentaneurini-Genus Ablabesmyia”, in Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, volume 137, number 2, →JSTOR...

Verb

shagreen (third-person singular simple present shagreens, present participle shagreening, simple past and past participle shagreened)

  1. (transitive) To give a texture resembling shagreen leather.

Synonyms of shagreen

Forms of shagreen

Noun
pluralshagreens
alternative formchagreen
Verb
third-person singular presentshagreens
present participleshagreening
past participleshagreened
pastshagreened

Origin of shagreen

First use appears c. 1677, an Anglicized form of chagrin, from French chagrin, from Ottoman Turkish صاغری (modern Turkish sağrı). However, the etymology of French chagrin is complex and disputed, and likely of Germanic origin. Whether there was any influence between an existing French word of Germanic origin and a Turkish loan is unclear.

Words formed from shagreen

Words that rhyme with shagreen

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about shagreen

What does shagreen mean?
Shagreen means an untanned leather, often dyed green; originally made from horse skin, today mostly made from the skin of a shark or ray.
What part of speech is shagreen?
Shagreen can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce shagreen?
Shagreen is pronounced /ʃəˈɡɹiːn/ (UK).
What is the plural of shagreen?
The plural of shagreen is shagreens.

Words near shagreen in the dictionary

  1. shaglike
  2. shagnasties
  3. shagnasty
  4. shagpile
  5. shagpiles
  6. shagreen
  7. shagreen ray
  8. shagreenate
  9. shagreened
  10. shagreening
  11. shagreens

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shagreen (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: “shagreen.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shagreen. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.