prismatic

prismatic, iridescent, opalescent, opaline are comparable when they mean marked by or displaying a variety of colors.

Prismatic implies an exhibition of the colors of the spectrum (as when a ray of light is refracted by a prism) or of a rainbow. In its nontechnical and extended use it merely suggests a brilliant or striking variety of colors

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Jeremy Taylor's style is prismatic. It unfolds the colors of the rainbow— Hazlitt

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have you ever observed a hummingbird moving about in an aerial dance among the flowers—a living prismatic gem that changes its color with every change of position?— Hudson

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Iridescent implies a rainbowlike play of shifting, merging colors such as is exhibited by a soap bubble, by mother of pearl, and by the plumage of some birds

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the whole texture of his mind, though its substance seem plain and grave, shows itself at every turn iridescent with poetic feeling like shot silk— J. R. Lowell

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something iridescent, like the shining of wet sand— Repplier

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Opalescent and the less frequent opaline imply both the soft milky quality and the iridescence of an opal

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Titian hardly ever paints sunshine, but a certain opalescent twilight which has as much of human emotion as of imitative truth in it— Ruskin

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the opaline light which comes through these lateral bays, and makes a sort of veil . . . under the lofty vaQlting— Henry Adams

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