Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

diaphanous

UK/daɪˈæf.ən.əs/US/daɪˈæf.ən.əs/
adjectiveC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,887 of 15,258neutral

Diaphanous means so fine and light that you can see through it. A diaphanous curtain.

It is used of cloth almost exclusively and always with approval. The Greek behind it means shining through, which is exactly what such cloth does.

Unknown · Public domain

Definitions of diaphanous

  1. 1adjectivediaphanousSo fine and light that you can see through it.C2

    “The diaphanous fabric weighed almost nothing.”

diaphanous is a quality.

Where it comes from

Greek diaphanes means showing through, from dia plus phainein, to show.

  1. Ancient Greek

    διαφανής

  2. Medieval Latin

    diaphanus

  3. English, today

    diaphanous

Built from

  • δια- · Ancient Greek — through
  • φαίνω · Ancient Greek — to shine, appear

From Medieval Latin diaphanus, from Ancient Greek διαφανής, from δια- (“through”) + φαίνω (“to shine, appear”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

diaphanous in the wild

  • Modern negligees are often much looser, made of sheer and diaphanous fabrics, and trimmed with lace or other fine material and bows.

    Negligee

  • The moondust atmosphere might also gather itself into a sort of diaphanous wind.

    Magnetic field of the Moon

  • Among them, ROCK1 (Rho-associated, coiled-coil containing protein kinase 1) and DIAPH1 (Diaphanous Homologue 1, a.k.a. hDia1, homologue to mDia1 in mouse, diaphanous in Drosophila) are the best described.

    Transforming protein RhoA

  • Protein diaphanous homolog 1 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the DIAPH1 gene.

    DIAPH1

  • The encoded protein has sequence homology to diaphanous and formin proteins within the Formin Homology (FH)1 and FH2 domains.

    FHOD1

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.