Chatoyants

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Characterized by a shimmering effect that resembles a cat's eye, often seen in certain gemstones and materials
2. Exhibiting a play of light across its surface that creates a dynamic visual phenomenon, commonly found in reflective substances
3. Describing a lustrous quality that produces alternating bands of color or brightness, particularly in mineral specimens

Etymology: The plural "chatoyants" is simply the plural of "chatoyant," an adjective borrowed from French, where it is the present participle of "chatoyer," meaning "to iridesce, like a cat's eye." The French verb is built on "chat," the word for "cat," and the link is the eye itself: a cat's eye seems to glow with a moving band of light, and the French coined a verb to describe that effect. The word thus describes a surface that shows a bright streak of light that shifts as the stone or fibre is turned, the same shimmer seen in cat's-eye chrysoberyl and some other gems. English borrowed the adjective straight from French, so the sense of a shifting, cat-like sheen came across intact rather than being reshaped along the way.