Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Capable of transmitting light so that objects or images can be seen as if there were no intervening material. See Synonyms at clear.
- adj. Permeable to electromagnetic radiation of specified frequencies, as to visible light or radio waves.
- adj. So fine in texture that it can be seen through; sheer. See Synonyms at airy.
- adj. Easily seen through or detected; obvious: transparent lies.
- adj. Free from guile; candid or open: transparent sincerity.
- adj. Obsolete Shining through; luminous.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Having the property of transmitting rays of light so that bodies situated beyond or behind can be distinctly seen; transmitting light-waves radiated from some source, without absorption or scattering; pervious to light; diaphanous; pellucid: as, transparent glass; a transparent diamond: opposed to opaque, and distinguished from translucent.
- Admitting the passage of light through interstices.
- Figuratively, easily seen through or understood; easily intelligible.
- Bright; shining; clear.
- Synonyms Bright, limpid, crystalline.
- n. A costume consisting of a dress of lace, tulle, gauze, or other thin fabric, worn over another dress of rich material. This fashion seems to have been introduced about 1675.
Wiktionary
- adj. See-through, clear; having the property that light passes through it almost undisturbed, such that one can see through it clearly.
- adj. Open, public; having the property that theories and practices are publicly visible, thereby reducing the chance of corruption.
- adj. Obvious; readily apparent; easy to see or understand.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Having the property of transmitting rays of light, so that bodies can be distinctly seen through; pervious to light; diaphanous; pellucid; ; -- opposed to
opaque . - adj. Admitting the passage of light; open; porous.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. free of deceit
- adj. easily understood or seen through (because of a lack of subtlety)
- adj. transmitting light; able to be seen through with clarity
- adj. so thin as to transmit light
Etymologies
- Middle English, from Old French, from Medieval Latin trānspārēns, trānspārent-, present participle of trānspārēre, to show through : Latin trāns-, trans- + Latin pārēre, to show.
Examples
“Van Eyck secured his drawing in dark, then threw a pale transparent middle tint over the whole, and recovered his _highest_ lights; all was _transparent_ except these.”
“Also we have -- what we call the transparent tour group vendors for our customers to make sure every customer that we know what exactly they would do during their leisure products itinerary.”
“What should be transparent is the decision and its implementation.”
“Moreover, they are staffed by professionals who maintain transparent funding pipelines and reduce compliance challenges for partnering NGO's.”
“There are some stickers, which are not of very good quality and comprise of a thin transparent film which is printed with a design followed by a layer of top coat, which leads to the weakening of the glue and the fading of the design.”
“Verizon Wireless done transparent from the start that the Droid smartphone was designed to put vigour upon Apple, the builder of the iPhone, as well as AT&T (T), the exclusive U.S. iPhone carrier.”
RIM May Feel Android Effect | Hottest News at 365Daynews.Com
“I think the accusation that we've failed to be transparent is unfair," said Jim Millstein, Treasury's chief restructuring officer, who remains confident that taxpayers ultimately will not lose money on the AIG bailout.”
The Washington Post: Report: Treasury's AIG bailout loss estimate too optimistic
“Table in transparent extralight glass characterised by extreme lightness and formal cleanness.”
“Having discussions out in the open, completely transparent, is the only way something like this can be pulled off.”
“His designs on her had been transparent from the first, when he had tried to feed her up.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘transparent’.
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Topical
The buzzwords of our time
actionable, administrivia, advermation, agreeance, backbone provider, back-sourcing, baked in, bandwidth, barn raising, Barneyware, belly-buttons, Below Zeros and 840 more...
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Fairylike
fairylike, enchanted, pixieish, pixyish, impish, mischievous, fluttery, magical, bewitching, enchanting, fey, otherworldly and 126 more...
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ghost
This is Ghost List 2 ( the kind that go 'boo!' ) :P
phantom, spectral, specter, spectre, spooky, poltergeist, haunt, spirit, banshee, cryptic, shadow, phantasm and 294 more...
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trans-
across or beyond; on or to the other side; through; going beyond
transcendent, transform, transonic, transalpine, transcontinental, transparent, transparency, transportation, transport, transatlantic, transfer, translate and 30 more...
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I am : bright
Verbs and adjectives (mostly adjectives) pertaining to physical light, brightness and/or clarity.
bright, brilliant, ablaze, afire, aflame, incandescent, fluorescent, phosphorescent, lucent, lambent, transparent, clear and 26 more...
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pervious
or impervious that clouds and is the tissue
permeable, transcalent, diathermic, pervial, transpicuous, hepatization, leachy, transparent, well water, porous, poromeric, radiolucent and 6 more...
oroboros Contranym: invisible v. obvious. Mar 14, 2010
knitandpurl "Those passages which, when I wrote them, were so colourless in comparison with my thought, so complicated and opaque in comparison with my harmonious and transparent vision, so full of gaps which I had not managed to fill, that the reading of them was a torture to me, had only accentuated in me the sense of my own impotence and of my incurable lack of talent."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 770 of the Modern Library paperback edition Feb 18, 2010
knitandpurl "The iron shutters of the baker's shop and of the dairy, which had been lowered last night over every possibility of feminine bliss, were now being raised, like the canvas of a ship that is getting under way and about to set sail across the transparent sea, on to a vision of young shopgirls."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 144 of the Modern Library paperback edition Jan 7, 2010
knitandpurl "The sun's rays fell upon my bed and passed through the transparent shell of my attenuated body, warmed me, made me glow like crystal."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 25 of the Modern Library paperback edition Dec 24, 2009
knitandpurl "When I followed my instinct only, the jellyfish used to revolt me at Balbec; but if I had the eyes to regard them, like Michelet, from the standpoint of natural history and aesthetics, I saw an exquisite blue girandole. Are they not, with the transparent velvet of their petals, as it were the mauve orchids of the sea?"
--Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 36 of the Modern Library paperback edition Jan 24, 2009
rolig I like contranyms, if the opposing meanings are truly well established and especially if they are etymologically distinct (like, I think, "cleave", the classic example of a contranym), or if they separated so long ago that their common origin is essentially forgotten, or when a certain use of a word is so counterintuitive as to be remarkable (e.g. the use of "commencement" to refer to a ceremony that marks the completion of one's education). Jan 3, 2009
sarra rolig, I think that's how most, if not all autoantonyms work; that's why I'm not a fan of them and don't find them particularly fascinating. Each to their own, though. Jan 3, 2009
rolig I don't see (pun intended) "transparent" as being contranymic or autantonymous. The core notion of transparency is that something becomes invisible so that something else can be visible. Etymologically, the word means "appearing through". When we say, "The negotiations should be transparent", we are using a kind of metonymy: the transparency refers to the framework of the negotiations, which should be "invisible" (not opaque), allowing us to see what is actually happening. To call the word "transparent" contranymic seems to flatten it into two opposing meanings, whereas it actually conveys a single metaphorical meaning that is whole, if complex. Jan 3, 2009
qroqqa 'Opaque' is autantonymous for the same reason, which always slows me down: the interface is opaque to users, so that means, uh . . . Jan 3, 2009
mollusque Contranymic: "open, visible" (the negotiations must be transparent so that everyone has the same information); "invisible" (the system upgrade should be transparent to the users). Jan 3, 2009
knitandpurl "The grey light, falling like a fine rain, wove without ceasing a transparent web through which the Sunday strollers appeared in a silvery sheen."
--The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, Revised by D.J. Enright, p 474 of the Modern Library paperback edition Sep 2, 2008
knitandpurl "The cold spiced beef with carrots made its appearance, couched by the Michelangelo of our kitchen upon enormous crystals of aspic, like transparent blocks of quartz."
-- Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, Revised by D.J. Enright, p 39 of the Modern Library paperback edition Mar 5, 2008
gangerh (fd) seeing your Dad move in with another woman.
(Thanks Graham Burgess) Jan 23, 2008
slumry user transparent Jun 20, 2007