pearl
noun · verb
Simple meaning
A small, round, shiny white gem found inside certain shells
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
purlIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈpɝl
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
literally
A shelly concretion, usually rounded, and having a brilliant luster, with varying tints, found in the mantle, or between the mantle and shell, of certain bivalve mollusks, especially in the pearl oysters and river mussels, and sometimes in certain univalves. It is usually due to a secretion of shelly substance around some irritating foreign particle. Its substance is the same as nacre, or mother-of-pearl. Round lustrous pearls are used in jewellery.
A major river in Guangdong, China; in full, the Pearl River.
A capsule of gelatin or similar substance containing liquid for, e.g., medicinal application.
Ellipsis of Pearl Harbor: a harbor in Oahu, Hawaii, United States, in the Pacific Ocean. [A placename]
A light-colored tern.
Short for Pearl River (Etymology 2): a river in Mississippi and Louisiana, which empties into the Gulf of Mexico
verb
transitive
To cause to resemble pearls in shape; to make into small round grains.
intransitiveof a liquid
To bead; to form droplets.
transitive
To cause to resemble pearls in lustre or iridescence.
Gather pearls, from oysters in the ocean
intransitive
To hunt for pearls
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (literally) A shelly concretion, usually rounded, and having a brilliant luster, with varying tints, found in the mantle, or between the mantle and shell, of certain bivalve mollusks, especially in the pearl oysters and river mussels, and sometimes in certain univalves. It is usually due to a secretion of shelly substance around some irritating foreign particle. Its substance is the same as nacre, or mother-of-pearl. Round lustrous pearls are used in jewellery.
Used this way, pearl is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It sounds natural in ordinary conversation and in expressive writing alike.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Everyday but emotionally strong
Nearby words
- bone , more casual, better suited to speech than writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use pearl
- “She wore a beautiful pearl necklace to the elegant party.”noun
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.