hamish macdouall

Tee-hee. Hamish Macdouall just used the word “nacreous” in his Googlies & Grass Stains blog on Stuff. I ven­ture it is the first time that word has appeared on Stuff ever, and that it would­n’t have sneaked past a Dom-Post sub if it was going in the dead-tree edi­tion. It’s rare that any­one these days uses a word with which I am unfa­mil­i­ar but this was one I had to check. And the first defin­i­tion offered by Google (via Merriam-Webster) is spec­tac­u­larly unhelpful:

: pos­sess­ing the qual­it­ies of, con­sist­ing of, or abound­ing in nacre ;

Well, yes, obviously.