Marmoreal

Word of the Day for Monday, March 25, 2013

Marmoreal \mahr-MAWR-ee-uhl, -MOHR-\, adjective:

of or like marble: skin of marmoreal smoothness.

Under the white banner of Andrew there was Renaul, and true love, and the ancient Greeks, with their lofty rhetoric and marmoreal beauty…
-- Daniel Mendelsohn, "The American Boy," The New Yorker, Jan. 7, 2013

Then she sank back into her immobility and marmoreal silence.
-- Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, 1831

First appearing in English in the late 1700s, marmoreal comes from the Latin term marmoreus, which literally means "of marble."

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com