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Diaphanous vs Ethereal - What's the difference?

diaphanous | ethereal | Related terms |

As adjectives the difference between diaphanous and ethereal

is that diaphanous is transparent or translucent; allowing light to pass through; capable of being seen through while ethereal is pertaining to the hypothetical upper, purer air, or to the higher regions beyond the earth or beyond the atmosphere; celestial; otherworldly; as, ethereal space; ethereal regions.

diaphanous

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Transparent or translucent; allowing light to pass through; capable of being seen through.
  • * 1899 , Joseph Conrad,
    • The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marsh was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds.
  • * 1999 , Nicholas Humphrey, A History of the Mind: Evolution and the Birth of Consciousness , page 96,
    • But nonetheless the purpleness of the imagined purple cow will almost certainly be meaner, more diaphanous , more fleeting than any real-life purple that you ever saw: to imagine a purple cow is just not the same thing as to have a purple sensation (or at least a purple sensation worth the name).
  • * 2004 , , Margaret Maulden (translator), Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners , page 98,
    • The evening mist, drifting among the leafless poplars, veiled their silhouettes with a violet film, paler and more translucent than the most diaphanous gauze that might have caught in their branches.
  • Of a fine, almost transparent, texture; gossamer; light and insubstantial.
  • * 1951', , Unpublished preface to a collection, '''2007 , Mark Richardson (editor), ''The Collected Prose of Robert Frost , page 169,
    • The most diaphanous wings carry a burden of pollen from flower to flower.
  • * 1963', , quoted in '''1985 , Floyd Merrell, ''Deconstruction Reframed , page 67,
    • What is amazing is that "a concept that is created by mind itself, the sequence of integers, the simplest and most diaphanous thing for the constructive mind, assumes a similar aspect of obscurity and deficiency when viewed from the axiomatic angle" (Weyl, 1963, 220).

    Synonyms

    * (allowing light to pass through) translucent * delicate, insubstantial

    Related terms

    * diaphanously * diaphanousness

    Antonyms

    * (transparent or translucent) opaque * concrete, solid

    ethereal

    English

    Alternative forms

    * aethereal * aetherial * * (obsolete) * * (obsolete)

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Pertaining to the hypothetical upper, purer air, or to the higher regions beyond the earth or beyond the atmosphere; celestial; otherworldly; as, ethereal space; ethereal regions.
  • * 1667 : , Paradise Lost , book VII
    • Go, heavenly guest, ethereal messenger.
  • * 1862 : , Walking .
    • I trust that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts will be clearer, fresher, and more ethereal , as our sky,...
  • Consisting of ether; hence, exceedingly light or airy; tenuous; spiritlike; characterized by extreme delicacy, as form, manner, thought, etc.
  • * 1733 : , An Essay on Man
    • Vast chain of being, which from God began, Natures ethereal , human, angel, man.
  • Delicate, light and airy.

    • Derived terms

    * ethereality * ethereally * etherealness * etherealization * etherealisation * etherealizing

    References

    * American English forms