hyaline

English

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

hyaline (comparative more hyaline, superlative most hyaline)

Glassy, transparent; amorphous.
- 1791, Erasmus Darwin, The Economy of Vegetation, J. Johnson, p. 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.

glassy, transparent

hyaline (countable and uncountable, plural hyalines)

(poetic) Anything glassy, translucent or transparent; the sea or sky.
- 1667, John Milton, “Book VII”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […], OCLC 228722708; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554:
  The clear hyaline, the glassy sea.
- 1844, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, A Rhapsody of Life's Progress
  Our blood runs amazed 'neath the calm hyaline.
(zoology, anatomy) A clear translucent substance in tissues.
(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

hyaline