If you live in the Northern hemisphere, the temperature outside is probably going up about now, and you’ve long since packed away the woolen jackets and hats and brought out the light, cool fabrics of summer. The thinner a fabric is, the cooler you’ll be wearing it. Shirts and skirts for summer are often diaphanous, made of loosely-woven cotton or thin silk. The adjective diaphanous refers to something that is so thin and transparent that light will shine through it easily. Synonyms of diaphanous include gossamer, insubstantial, and translucent; antonyms are opaque, weighty, and solid.

Example: The bride was draped with a diaphanous veil that fell to the floor, allowing hints of the elaborate embroidery on her dress to show through.

The word comes from the Greek root phainein (“to show” or “to cause to appear”) with the prefix dia- (“through, across”). The inventor of the transparent plastic wrap cellophane gave it its name using this same root word.

The word translucent also means “letting light shine through” and in this case, the roots of the word are much easier to spot. The prefix trans- (which also means “through” or “across” or “beyond”) is a common one, appearing in words like transfer and transpose and transcontinental. You can see the root word meaning “to shine” (the Latin verb lucere) in other words as well, such as illuminate and lustrous.

Another word that means “letting light shine through” is pellucid, which adds per- (another prefix meaning “through” – think of the words permeable and perforate) to the root word lucere. This word can also be used in the metaphoric sense of “clear” to mean “easy to understand.”

We hope you’ve gotten a clear idea about all of the different words that can be used to express the concept of transparent!