diaphanous
/daɪˈæf.ən.əs/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 1.97 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
4
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Transparent or translucent; allowing light to pass through; capable of being seen through.
adj
Of a fine, almost transparent, texture; gossamer; light and insubstantial.
adj
Example Sentences
- "The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marsh was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds."
- "Adam requires a touch of feminine lace and a whisper of diaphanous silk, not a direct vision of the gaping maw of the human vulva."
- "But nonetheless the purpleness of the imagined purple cow will almost certainly be meaner, more diaphanous, more fleeting than any real-life purple that you ever saw: to imagine a purple cow is just not the same thing as to have a purple sensation (or at least a purple sensation worth the name)."
- "The evening mist, drifting among the leafless poplars, veiled their silhouettes with a violet film, paler and more translucent than the most diaphanous gauze that might have caught in their branches."
- "1951, Robert Frost, Unpublished preface to a collection, 2007, Mark Richardson (editor), The Collected Prose of Robert Frost, page 169, The most diaphanous wings carry a burden of pollen from flower to flower."
- "1963, Hermann Weyl, quoted in 1985, Floyd Merrell, Deconstruction Reframed, page 67, What is amazing is that "a concept that is created by mind itself, the sequence of integers, the simplest and most diaphanous thing for the constructive mind, assumes a similar aspect of obscurity and deficiency when viewed from the axiomatic angle" (Weyl, 1963, 220)."
Etymology
From Medieval Latin diaphanus, from Ancient Greek διαφανής (diaphanḗs), from δια- (dia-, “through”) + φαίνω (phaínō, “to shine, appear”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: diaphanus, διαφανής
Inflected Forms
more diaphanous (comparative)
most diaphanous (superlative)