Definition of "hyaline"

hyaline

/ˈhaɪəlɪn/

adjective
comparative more hyaline, superlative most hyaline
1. Glassy, transparent; amorphous.
  Quotations
  And, as below she braids her hyaline hair, / Eyes her soft smiles reflected in the air […] .
  1791, Erasmus Darwin, The Economy of Vegetation, J. Johnson, page 117
  They bathed shivering in the cold waves, green hyaline swells in which they stood to the hips savage, intimate, comradely.
  1974, Guy Davenport, Tatlin!
noun
countable and uncountable, plural hyalines
1. (poetic) Anything glassy, translucent or transparent; the sea or sky.
  Quotations
  The clear hyaline, the glassy sea.
  1667, John Milton, “Book VII”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873,
  Our blood runs amazed 'neath the calm hyaline.
  1844, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, A Rhapsody of Life's Progress
2. (zoology, anatomy) A clear translucent substance in tissues.
3. (biochemistry) The main constituent of the walls of hydatid cysts; a nitrogenous body, which, by decomposition, yields a dextrogyrate sugar, susceptible to alcoholic fermentation.
  Quotations
  where a villus comes next to a gland the short cubical cells of the gland may be traced into the columnar cells of the villus , the hyaline border becoming more marked
  1880, Arthur Gamgee, A Text-book of the physiological chemistry […]