Word of the day: iridescent

From Anu Garg’s A.Word.A.Day, it’s iridescent:

PRONUNCIATION:
(ir-i-DES-uhnt)

MEANING:
adjective: Displaying a rainbow of colors that change when seen from different angles.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin irido- (rainbow), from iris (rainbow, iris plant, diaphragm of the eye), from Greek iris. Iris was the goddess of rainbows in Greek mythology. Earliest documented use: 1794.

Iridescent brings to my mind two bits of poetry. One is the first lines of Stanley Lombardo’s translation of Sappho’s appeal to Aphrodite:

Shimmering,
          iridescent,
                   deathless Aphrodite

Note how iridescent echoes shimmering and deathless echoes iridescent. You can read the poem and an explanation of the translation at Jacket.

Iridescent for me also means a sentence in Marianne Moore’s “The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing”:

                It’s fire in the dove-neck’s

iridescence; in the
       inconsistencies
of Scarlatti.

Dove-neck’s, iridescence, in the inconsistencies, of (rhyming with dove), Scarlatti: ah! music. You can read the poem on the fly at Google Books.

A related post
Other words and works of lit (apoplexy, avatar, bandbox, heifer, sanguine, sempiternal)