the.com/nacre
An oyster's way of turning irritation into something you'd steal from a dead queen.
means The iridescent inner shell layer—also called mother-of-pearl—that mollusks secrete in thin layers, which is also the same substance they coat an irritant with to form a pearl.
from English borrowed it from French 'nacre,' which came through Italian 'nacchera,' itself traceable to Arabic 'naqqāra'—originally meaning a drum or shell-like hollow vessel. The word drifted from 'shell-shaped thing' to the glistening lining itself, picking up its shimmer somewhere in the journey across Mediterranean trade routes.
- also called
- mother of pearl
- formed by
- layers of aragonite and conchin, stacked like bricks
- why it shimmers
- light bends through microscopic layers, not pigment
- same material as
- pearls themselves, just grown on shell instead of grit