Alabaster is a smooth white stone soft enough to carve. An alabaster figure, carved in alabaster, alabaster skin.
It is soft enough to work with a knife and translucent when cut thin, which is why medieval churches used it for window panes before glass was cheap. Alabaster skin is a set literary phrase for a very pale complexion.
1nounalabasterA smooth white stone soft enough to carve.
“An ancient alabaster jar, smooth and pale, stood in a glass case in the museum.”
alabaster is a stone.
Greek alabastros first named a jar for perfume, then the stone such jars were cut from.
egy
ꜥj
Ancient Greek
ἀλάβαστρος
Latin
alabaster — box for perfumes or unguents
Old French
alabastre
Middle English
alabastre
English, today
alabaster
Built from
From Middle English alabastre, from Old French alabastre, from Latin alabaster (“box for perfumes or unguents”), from Ancient Greek ἀλάβαστρος, from earlier ἀλάβαστος (“vase without handles for storing perfumes”). This may further derive from egy ꜥj-r-bꜣstjt (“vessel of the Egyptian goddess Bast”). The Latin suffix -aster is unrelated, but may have influenced the spelling of the borrowing from Ancient Greek (whence a direct loan could have been rendered as *alabastrus).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA