chatoyant

****************************************************************
Bring the gift of knowledge home for the holidays with the 
Eleventh Edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/book.pl?c11.htm&1
****************************************************************

The Word of the Day for December 12 is:

chatoyant   \shuh-TOY-unt\   adjective
     : having a changeable luster or color with an undulating narrow band of 
white light

Example sentence:
     The chest was opened to reveal a veritable treasure of glittering gold 
jewelry and chatoyant gems.

Did you know?
     The complex structure of a cat's eye not only enables it to see at night 
but also gives it the appearance of glowing in the dark. Not surprisingly, 
jewels that sport a healthy luster are often compared with the feline ocular 
organ, so much that the term "cat's-eye" is used to refer to those gems (such 
as chalcedony) that give off iridescence from within. If you've brushed up on 
your French lately, you might notice that the French word for "cat" ("chat") 
provides the first four letters of "chatoyant," a word used by jewelers to 
describe such lustrous gems. "Chatoyant" derives from the present participle of 
"chatoyer," a French verb that literally means "to shine like a cat's eyes."