transparent

Pluraltransparents

1. 1
   adjective

   Allowing light to pass through almost undisturbed, so that objects on the other side can be seen clearly.

   The diver admired the transparent water of the tropical lagoon.

   Glass is transparent, which is why it makes such good windows.

   Similarclear, see-through, limpid, crystalline

   Oppositeopaque, cloudy, murky

   Note

   The root sense is a Latin borrowing: Medieval Latin trānspārēns, the present participle of transpareō, built from trans and pareō, roughly 'showing through'. It displaced the native Old English þurhsīene. Precision here turns on refractive index. H. G. Wells's The Invisible Man (1897) rests on the point that a transparent thing vanishes in a medium that bends light almost exactly as it does.

2. 2
   adjective

   Readily apparent; so obvious that the underlying truth or intent is plain to see.

   The salesman's flattery was transparent, and the customers saw right through it.

   Her transparent attempt to change the subject fooled no one.

   Similarobvious, blatant, plain, evident, patent

   Oppositesubtle, veiled, hidden

   Note

   Said of people and their motives, it is usually unflattering. A transparent excuse is one you see straight through, and a transparent poker player is one whose hand shows in his face. That sets it apart from the "open government" meaning, where transparency is praised. Military analysts stretch it to a battlefield where the enemy can watch forces gather, though not always read their intent.

3. 3
   adjective

   Open and public, with practices and decisions visible to all, which reduces the chance of corruption.

   The company adopted transparent hiring practices that anyone could review.

   Citizens demanded a transparent investigation into the scandal.

   Similaropen, accountable, public

   Oppositesecretive, opaque, secret

4. 4
   adjective

   Happening automatically or in the background, so that the operation goes unnoticed by the user.

   The caching layer is transparent to the application, which behaves as if it were reading directly from disk.

   Encryption is transparent here, requiring no action from the user.

   Similarinvisible, seamless

   Note

   Here the word turns almost upside down: a transparent process is one you cannot see at all. The usual construction is transparent to someone. Rolf Oppliger (2003) writes of browsers caching passwords to make repeated logins transparent to the user. You look straight through the layer to what lies beyond it, the opposite emphasis from the "open to scrutiny" meaning, where everything is meant to be seen.

5. 5
   adjective

   Of a graphical image, having areas that let whatever sits behind it show through.

   Designers prefer a transparent PNG when the image must sit over varied backgrounds.

   The animated GIF had transparent regions that revealed the page color beneath.

   Oppositeopaque

   Note

   A designer's extension of the see-through sense. No light passes through a picture, but parts of it can be set to reveal whatever lies behind. In PNG and GIF files this is done with an alpha channel or a single reserved palette color. Designers call the whole file transparent (a transparent GIF) even when only its background is clear and the image itself is solid.

6. 6
   adjective

   Of a compression process, accurate enough that the compressed result is perceptually indistinguishable from the original input.

   Engineers consider the codec transparent at 256 kbps for most listeners.

   The encoder produced a transparent result that testers could not tell apart from the source.

   Note

   A signal-processing judgment made by ear or eye rather than by measurement. Lossy compression discards data, so the encoded file never matches the original bit for bit. Calling it transparent claims only that listeners or viewers cannot hear or see the difference under normal conditions. It is usually stated at a particular bitrate, and it is a weaker claim than lossless, where nothing is discarded at all.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   A thing that lets light pass through, so that whatever lies behind it can be seen.

   Held to the window, the colored sheet behaved as a transparent, casting the street view onto the floor.

   The collection displayed opaques and transparents side by side for comparison.

   Similartransparency

   Oppositeopaque

   Note

   The noun belongs to the workshop and the fashion plate, and it usually turns up in the plural. Harper's New Monthly Magazine in 1858 uses transparents for sheer parts left uncovered between puffings. F. L. Nowosatka (1935) lists transparents beside translucents for toothbrush-handle rings. Jeri L. Warhaftig's Creating Glass Beads (2011) layers transparents over a white core. It sorts materials by how much light they pass.

8. 8
   nounnonstandardcountable

   A parent who is transgender or transsexual.

   He described himself as a transparent raising two teenagers on his own.

   The documentary followed several transparents and their families over a year.

   Note

   A separate word that happens to share the spelling. It is a blend of trans- ('transgender or transsexual') and parent, unrelated to the see-through adjective. It is nonstandard, found in community writing such as Red Jordan Arobateau's Autumn Changes (1999) and in later academic prose. Because it looks identical to the everyday noun, it reads best where the context already makes the subject plain.

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