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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Of such fine texture as to be transparent or translucent: diaphanous tulle.
  2. adj. Characterized by delicacy of form. See Synonyms at airy.
  3. adj. Vague or insubstantial: diaphanous dreams of glory.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. Transmitting light; permitting the passage of light; transparent; clear; translucent.

Wiktionary

  1. adj. Transparent; allowing light to pass through; capable of being seen through.
  2. adj. Of a fine, almost transparent texture, as eg. gossamer.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. Allowing light to pass through, as porcelain; translucent or transparent; pellucid; clear.

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. so thin as to transmit light

Etymologies

  1. From Medieval Latin diaphanus, transparent, from Greek diaphanēs, from diaphainein, to be transparent : dia-, dia- + phainein, phan-, to show; see bhā-1 in Indo-European roots.

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  • duckbill "I remember once handling an automatic belonging to a fellow student, in the days . . . when I toyed with the idea of enjoying his little sister, a most diaphanous nymphet with a black hair bow, and then shooting myself."
    Nabokov, Lolita, page 29 Mar 1, 2011
  • benw "The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marshes was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds."

    —Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad Jan 5, 2011
  • knitandpurl "Either swift-moving and bent over the mythological wheel of her bicycle, strapped on rainy days inside the warrior tunic of her waterproof which moulded her breasts, her head turbaned and dressed with snakes, when she spread terror through the streets of Balbec; or else on the evenings when we had taken champagne into the woods of Chantepie, her voice provocative and altered, her face suffused with warm pallor, reddened only on the cheekbones, and when, unable to make it out in the darkness of the carriage, I drew her into the moonlight in order to see it more clearly, the face I was now trying in vain to recapture, to see again in a darkness that would never end. A little statuette on the drive to the island in the Bois, a still and plump face with coarse-grained skin at the pianola, she was thus by turns rain-soaked and swift, provoking and diaphanous, motionless and smiling, an angel of music."
    -- The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 659 of the Modern Library paperback edition Feb 15, 2010
  • knitandpurl "Between the two Balbec settings, so different one from the other, there was an interval of several years in Paris, the long expanse of which was dotted with all the visits that Albertine had paid me. I saw her in the different years of my life occupying, in relation to myself, different positions which made me feel the beauty of the intervening spaces, that long lapse of time during which I had remained without seeing her and in the diaphanous depths of which the roseate figure that I saw before me was carved with mysterious shadows and in bold relief. This was due also to the superimposition not merely of the successive images which Albertine had been for me, but also of the great qualities of intelligence and heart, and of the defects of character, all alike unsuspected by me, which Albertine, in a germination, a multiplication of herself, a fleshy efflorescence in sombre colours, had added to a nature that formerly could scarcely have been said to exist, but was now difficult to plumb."
    --The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 83 of the Modern Library paperback edition Dec 29, 2009
  • bilby That's precisely how I feel about bodhi, no offence. Oct 2, 2008
  • bodhi Don't like this word, it's pretentious and flowery without having any real beauty to it. Oct 2, 2008
  • bookhling Reminds me of the incredibly thin stalactite curtains in some caves. It was beautiful. Oct 2, 2008
  • lostsoul It makes me think of the Roman Goddess Diana in a flowing, gossamer-like gown. Dec 3, 2007
  • patchouli diaphragm is actually the closest phonetically and spelling-wise.

    Sep 1, 2007
  • reesetee Oh, yuck. Aug 21, 2007
  • arby I know, but it still has those first 4 characters that irresistably remind me of diapers, maybe because those are the only two words I know of that have that sequence, at least in English.

    Can you imagine diaphanous diapers, how gross would that be?!?! Aug 20, 2007
  • trivet This word seems to be rather the opposite of diapers... Aug 13, 2007
  • arby I don't care for this word - it reminds me of diapers. Aug 12, 2007
  • fbharjo "to show through" "to shine through" literally Jul 14, 2007

‘diaphanous’ has been looked up 8019 times, loved by 34 people, added to 201 lists, commented on 15 times, and has a Scrabble score of 16.