Literary notes about Diaphanous (AI summary)
In literature, “diaphanous” is often employed to evoke a sense of delicate translucence or ethereal lightness. Writers use the term to describe fabrics that seem to float or almost vanish in the light, such as the whisper-thin dresses worn by refined ladies ([1], [2]) or the airy quality of a gown that renders its wearer otherworldly ([3]). It also extends to natural phenomena, where the early dawn or a misty atmosphere is rendered as a diaphanous veil draping the landscape ([4], [5]). Moreover, the word finds a metaphorical niche in portraying intangible moods and fleeting forms, suggesting vulnerability or a subtle, impermanent beauty ([6], [7]).
- Ladies who dance should wear dresses of light and diaphanous materials, such as tulle , gauze, crape, net, &c., over coloured silk slips.
— from Routledge's Manual of Etiquette by George Routledge - She was seated by the open window, dressed in some sort of white diaphanous material, with a little touch of scarlet at the neck and waist.
— from The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle - There was something angelic about the girl as she sat there clad in soft diaphanous white.
— from The Mystery of the RavenspursA Romance and Detective Story of Thibet and England by Fred M. (Fred Merrick) White - The eastern sky was like a sheet of diaphanous silver, faintly crimsoned above the edges of the hills with streaks of the brightening dawn.
— from Cudjo's Cave by J. T. (John Townsend) Trowbridge - I looked across at New York, still surrounded in diaphanous mist, and endeavoured to adjust my mind to the immediate business.
— from Aliens by William McFee - He never spares himself, except now and then to assume a somewhat diaphanous anonymity.
— from Boswell's Life of Johnson by James Boswell - And the very clouds are not clouds, but only dreams of clouds, so filmy they are; ghosts of clouds, diaphanous spectres, illusions!
— from Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan: First Series by Lafcadio Hearn
