new words – isinglass

A pretty word I’ve not seen before, an obscure definition but one I might try to use in the future.

Isinglass – a semitransparent whitish very pure gelatin prepared from the air bladders of fishes and used especially as a clarifying agent and in jellies and glue

The sentence, from The Orchard Keeper:

“The lights of the city hovered in a nimbus and again stood fractured in the black river, isinglass image, tangled broken shapes: the shapeless splash of lights along the bridgewalk following the elliptic and receding rows of pole lamps across to meet them.”