TRANSPARENCY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does transparency mean? 

• TRANSPARENCY (noun)
  The noun TRANSPARENCY has 3 senses:

1. permitting the free passage of electromagnetic radiation

2. the quality of being clear and transparent

3. picture consisting of a positive photograph or drawing on a transparent base; viewed with a projector

  Familiarity information: TRANSPARENCY used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TRANSPARENCY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Permitting the free passage of electromagnetic radiation

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural phenomena

Synonyms:

transparence; transparency

Hypernyms ("transparency" is a kind of...):

physical phenomenon (a natural phenomenon involving the physical properties of matter and energy)

Antonym:

opacity (the phenomenon of not permitting the passage of electromagnetic radiation)

Derivation:

transparent (transmitting light; able to be seen through with clarity)

transparent (so thin as to transmit light)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The quality of being clear and transparent

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

transparence; transparency; transparentness

Hypernyms ("transparency" is a kind of...):

clarity; clearness; uncloudedness (the quality of clear water)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "transparency"):

limpidity; pellucidity; pellucidness (passing light without diffusion or distortion)

Derivation:

transparent (easily understood or seen through (because of a lack of subtlety))

Sense 3

Meaning:

Picture consisting of a positive photograph or drawing on a transparent base; viewed with a projector

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

foil; transparency

Hypernyms ("transparency" is a kind of...):

icon; ikon; image; picture (a visual representation (of an object or scene or person or abstraction) produced on a surface)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "transparency"):

lantern slide; slide (a transparency mounted in a frame; viewed with a slide projector)

overhead; viewgraph (a transparency for use with an overhead projector)

 Context examples 

A measurement of the transparency of a biological specimen.

(Clarity Measurement, NCI Thesaurus/CDISC)

The determination of the transparency of a sample.

(Clarity Measurement, NCI Thesaurus)

The ozone gas has also enabled them to improve the transparency of the cassava-based plastic.

(Scientists develop biodegradable plastic from cassava starch, SciDev.Net)

For once more he saw before his mind’s eye, as clear as transparency, the strange clauses of the will.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

His long, bloodless countenance was so thin and so white that it gave the strangest illusion of transparency.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Her skin was very brown, but, from its transparency, her complexion was uncommonly brilliant; her features were all good; her smile was sweet and attractive; and in her eyes, which were very dark, there was a life, a spirit, an eagerness, which could hardily be seen without delight.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

I was so filled with the play, and with the past—for it was, in a manner, like a shining transparency, through which I saw my earlier life moving along—that I don't know when the figure of a handsome well-formed young man dressed with a tasteful easy negligence which I have reason to remember very well, became a real presence to me.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The room was most dear to her, and she would not have changed its furniture for the handsomest in the house, though what had been originally plain had suffered all the ill-usage of children; and its greatest elegancies and ornaments were a faded footstool of Julia's work, too ill done for the drawing-room, three transparencies, made in a rage for transparencies, for the three lower panes of one window, where Tintern Abbey held its station between a cave in Italy and a moonlight lake in Cumberland, a collection of family profiles, thought unworthy of being anywhere else, over the mantelpiece, and by their side, and pinned against the wall, a small sketch of a ship sent four years ago from the Mediterranean by William, with H.M.S. Antwerp at the bottom, in letters as tall as the mainmast.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)