Literary notes about Translucent (AI summary)
The word "translucent" frequently appears in literary descriptions to evoke an ethereal quality—whether describing the soft reflection of light on water, the delicate nature of a material, or an atmospheric veil that both conceals and reveals. Writers use it to paint scenes with a dreamlike, liminal quality, as when a sunset’s glow turns a cabin’s window into a disc of scarlet radiance [1] or when the early morning sky is portrayed as a glittering, translucent blue [2]. In natural descriptions, it transforms ordinary objects into things of wonder, such as milk-white opal-like materials [3] or even translucent tissues that suggest both fragility and hidden complexity [4]. This careful choice of adjective serves to enhance the visual and symbolic layers of a scene, imbuing it with an almost otherworldly clarity.
- The two ports of the cabin were discs of scarlet, that pure translucent colour which comes from the reflection of sunset in leagues of still water.
— from The Path of the King by John Buchan - The atmosphere and sky, an hour or so before sunrise, so cool, still, translucent, give the whole apparition to great advantage.
— from Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman - It was milk-white, and became translucent in water, like that beautiful variety of opal, the hydrophane.
— from White Shadows in the South Seas by Frederick O'Brien - They are square-topped, and are edged with translucent, hardish tissue, as if for crushing food.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin
