shagreen

Etymology

1677, Anglicized form of chagrin, from French chagrin, from Ottoman Turkish صاغری (modern Turkish sağrı). However, the etymology of French chagrin is complex and disputed, likely of Germanic origin – whether there was any influence between an existing French word of Germanic origin and a Turkish loan is unclear.

noun

1. An untanned leather, often dyed green; originally made from horse skin, today mostly made from the skin of a shark or ray.
   The following day the treasures of the mysterious tower came pouring in: pictures, statues, gems, shells, china, stuffed beasts and birds, tables, vases, petrifactions, arms, mandarins, &c. &c.; and among them the shagreen skin, with the injunction, "Sell it for any thing—nothing—give it away; only, get rid of it." 1832, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Heath's Book of Beauty, 1833, The Talisman, page 80
   On the old lecturn or reading-stand which he used for his heavier tomes, The Testaments of Carnamagos, in its covers of shagreen with hasps of human bone, lay open at the very page which had frightened him so unreasonably with its eldritch intimations. August 1935, Clark Ashton Smith, Weird Tales, "The Treader of the Dust"
2. (entomology) A rough or spiny surface of an insect's cuticle.
   If the shagreen dots be carefully observed they will be found to possess an annular arrangement. November 7, 1883, Edward B. Poulton, “Notes upon, or suggested hy, the colours, markings, and protective attitudes of certain lepidopterous larvæ and pupæ, and of a phytophagous hymenopterous larva”, in Transactions of the Entomological Society of London
   The shagreen of the abdominal tergites generally consists of small spinules, singly or in caudally convex arcs. 1985, “The Immature Chironomids of the Eastern United States VI. Pentaneurini-Genus Ablabesmyia”, in Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, volume 137, number 2, →JSTOR, pages 153–212

verb

1. (transitive) To give a texture resembling shagreen leather.