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hyaline

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Latin hyalinus, from Koine Greek ὑάλινος (huálinos), from ὕαλος (húalos, glass).

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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hyaline (comparative more hyaline, superlative most hyaline)

  1. Glassy, transparent; amorphous.
    • 1791, Erasmus Darwin, The Economy of Vegetation, J. Johnson, page 117:
      And, as below she braids her hyaline hair, / Eyes her soft smiles reflected in the air [] .
    • 1974, Guy Davenport, Tatlin!:
      They bathed shivering in the cold waves, green hyaline swells in which they stood to the hips savage, intimate, comradely.

Derived terms

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Translations

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Noun

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hyaline (countable and uncountable, plural hyalines)

  1. (poetic) Anything glassy, translucent or transparent; the sea or sky.
    • 1667, John Milton, “Book VII”, in Paradise Lost. [], London: [] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker []; [a]nd by Robert Boulter []; [a]nd Matthias Walker, [], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: [], London: Basil Montagu Pickering [], 1873, →OCLC:
      The clear hyaline, the glassy sea.
    • 1844, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, A Rhapsody of Life's Progress:
      Our blood runs amazed 'neath the calm hyaline.
  2. (zoology, anatomy) A clear translucent substance in tissues.
  3. (biochemistry) The main constituent of the walls of hydatid cysts; a nitrogenous body, which, by decomposition, yields a dextrogyrate sugar, susceptible to alcoholic fermentation.
    • 1880, Arthur Gamgee, A Text-book of the physiological chemistry [] :
      where a villus comes next to a gland the short cubical cells of the gland may be traced into the columnar cells of the villus , the hyaline border becoming more marked

Latin

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Adjective

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hyaline

  1. vocative masculine singular of hyalinus