spangle

1. Any small sparkling object.Examples: "Thus in a Starry night fond children cry / For the rich ſpangles that adorn the Sky; / Which though they ſhine for ever fixed there, / With light and influence relieve us here."; "See round the Poles where keener ſpangles ſhine, / Where ſpices ſmoke beneath the burning Line, / (Earths wide extreams) her ſable flag diſplay'd; / And all the nations cover'd in her ſhade!"; "[N]ight closed with a blue and cloudless sky, in which the thousand spangles that deck the firmament received double brilliancy from some slight touch of frost, although the paler planet, their mistress, was but in her first quarter."figuratively

2. (by extension)Examples: "Mariner, mariner, furl your sails, / For here are the blissful downs and dales, / And merrily, merrily carol the gales, / And the spangle dances in bight and bay, / And the rainbow forms and flies on the land / Over the islands free; […]"broadly

3. (by extension)Examples: "In the male [mille fleur booted bantam] the general plumage color is red with the tip of each feather ending in a V-shaped, white spangle which is separated from the red portion of the feather by a black bar. […] The wing bows are also red, tipped with white spangles."; "The Golden-Spangled Hamburg has an attractive pattern, the plumage over the body being golden bay, each feather ending with an elongated, greenish-black spangle. […] The spangles of the wing coverts should form two distinct, parallel bars across the wings."; "In summer, mated female wasps deposit large numbers of eggs in the tissue on the underside of expanded oak leaves, inducing the formation of characteristic spangle galls. […] Spangle galls often occur in vast numbers, and cause spotting of the foliage, visible from above. However, infested trees are seldom if ever harmed."broadly