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papery

adjectiveC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,226 of 15,258mostly written

Papery means thin and dry to the touch. Papery skin, a papery husk, papery bark.

It suits onion skins, birch bark and old hands, and applied to skin it says thin and fragile rather than merely dry. The image is exact — paper is thin, dry and tears easily, and all three are meant.

Definitions of papery

  1. 1adjectivepaperyThin and dry to the touch.C1

    “The dried leaves were papery and crackled under our feet.”

papery is a quality of texture.

Where it comes from

From paper + -y.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

papery in the wild

  • A samara (, UK also: ) is a winged achene, a type of fruit in which a flattened wing of fibrous, papery tissue develops from the ovary wall.

    Samara (fruit)

  • Burnupena papyracea, common name the papery burnupena, is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusc.

    Burnupena papyracea

  • The sepals are brownish or purplish fading to thinned, papery, whitish or translucent edges.

    Paronychia chartacea

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.