Other forms: pearls
A pearl is the small, smooth, milky ball that grows inside an oyster. One on a thin chain, a rope of them round a grandmother's neck, the pale shine sliding across as the light moves.
A pearl is the one gem nobody digs up or cuts: the oyster grows it around a piece of grit, layer on layer. The word does colour and texture too — pearly teeth, pearl buttons, a pearl-grey sky — and the rainbow lining of the shell itself is mother-of-pearl. Pearls of wisdom are short wise sayings, said straight or said sarcastically; to cast pearls before swine is to give something fine to someone who cannot see its worth. Worn round the neck, the plural stands on its own: she put her pearls on. Careful with the sound — pearl rhymes with girl, not with real.
1nounpearlA small hard round gem that grows inside an oyster or similar shell.
“The diver surfaced with a single pearl the size of a pea.”
2nounnecklaceA necklace or strand made of such gems, in the plural.
“She wore her grandmother's pearls to the funeral.”
3nounpreciousSomething small and precious, especially a piece of wisdom.
“The old cook dropped a pearl now and then: never salt beans before they soften.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
pearl is a gem.
Pearl came through Middle English and Old French perle, and there the trail goes cold. One guess runs back through an unrecorded Medieval Latin pernula to Latin perna, a haunch of meat and also a sea shell shaped like a leg of lamb. Another takes it from Medieval Latin perla and Latin perula, a little bag. Both guesses start with something plain you could hold, rather than with the shine.
Latin
perna — haunch; a marine bivalve shaped like a leg of lamb
Medieval Latin
*pernula
Old French
perle
Middle English
perle
English, today
pearl
Middle English perle, from Old French perle of uncertain etymology. Probably via unattested Medieval Latin pernula, from Latin perna (“haunch; a marine bivalve shaped like a leg of lamb”) but also derived from Medieval Latin perla, from Latin perula (“little bag”). Its typographic use follows the name given by Jean Jannon to the type used in his miniature editions of Vergil, Horace, & the New Testament in the 1620s, which were the smallest printed works to his time. Its surfing use derives from the supposed resemblance to pearl diving.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA