alabaster

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Definitions (12)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. noun A dense translucent, white or tinted fine-grained gypsum.
  2. noun A variety of hard calcite, translucent and sometimes banded.
  3. noun A pale yellowish pink to yellowish gray.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (4)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

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Examples

  • First he crushed the herbs with a pestle in a mortar of carved alabaster, and measured them into a clay pot. —  Warlock
  • VII Leaving Sharak beneath a tree to mind the horses, Conan and Akeba set out through the night in a crouching run for the alabaster-walled compound of the Cult of Doom. —  Conan The Unconquered
  • Chapter VII Leaving Sharak beneath a tree to mind the horses, Conan and Akeba set out through the night in a crouching run for the alabaster-walled compound of the Cult of Doom. —  Conan The Unconquered
  • With a sad and simultaneously disdainful expression, the alabaster-skinned man vanished. —  Darkness
  • The alabaster-skinned man laughed. —  Darkness
 

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Alabaster has been looked up 389 times, favorited twice, listed 90 times, and commented on twice.

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Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

onyx ·  porphyry ·  obsidian ·  jade ·  porcelain ·  marble ·  ivory ·  lazuli ·  bronze ·  terra-cotta ·  granite ·  amethyst
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English alabastre, from Old French, from Latin alabaster, from Greek alabastros, alabastos, possibly of Egyptian origin.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. Early modern English usually alablaster, allablaster, from Middle English alabastre, alabaster, alabaustre, alabast (= Old Dutch alabast, abast, Dutch albast = Danish alabast = Swedish albaster, now alabaster), from Old French alabastre, French albâtre = Spanish Portuguese Italian alabastro = Middle High German G. alabaster, from Middle Latin alabastrum, alabaustrum, alabaster (the mineral), from Latin alabaster, masculine, alabastrum, neuter, a box or casket for perfumes, unguents, etc., tapering to a point at the top, hence also the form of a rose-bud, = Gothic (Moesogothic) alabalstraun, from Greek ἀλάβαστρος, masculine, ἀλάβαστρον, neuter, earlier and more correctly ἀλάβαστος, a box, casket, or vase of alabaster (later also of other materials), the mineral itself being hence known as ἀλαβαστίτης or ἀλαβαστρίτης, Latin alabastrites (see alabastrites); said to be named from a town in Egypt where there were quarries of alabaster; but in fact the town was named from the quarries, )Αλαβαστρῶνπόλις (Ptolemy), Latin Alabastrōn oppidum, i. e., ‘town of alabastra.’ In Arabic and Persian alabaster is called rukhām.
 

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/ˈæləbæstər/
by American Heritage
by peggy tharpe

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