Words / C / General

chatoyant

adjective/ʃəˈtɔɪənt/

C2CEFR level
92/100Rarity: very rare
LiteraryRegister

Showing a shifting, luminous band of light like that of a cat's eye.

The polished agate was chatoyant, a bright seam of light sliding across it as she turned it in the sun.

Similar: shimmering, gleaming, opalescent

Origin: From French chatoyer 'to shimmer like a cat's eye', from chat 'cat'.

Topic: light / colour in General English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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