Definition of "pellucid"
pellucid
adjective
comparative more pellucid, superlative most pellucid
Allowing the passage of light; translucent or transparent.
Quotations
Blood to the naked Eye appears all red; but by a good Microſcope, vvherein its leſſer parts appear, ſhevvs only ſome fevv Globules of Red, ſvvimming in a pellucid Liquor; and hovv theſe Globules vvould appear, if Glaſſes could be found, that yet could magnifie them 1000, or 10000 times more, is uncertain.
1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], “Of Our Complex Ideas of Substances”, in An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Eliz[abeth] Holt, for Thomas Basset, […], book II, § 11, page 140
As a stream, clear and bright, becomes foul with weeds, and stagnates by its distant meanderings from its pure and pellucid source,—so the active imagination, the capacious intellect of Douglas, those high and valuable endowments, had, by an undue use of them, been perverted.
1838, [Letitia Elizabeth] Landon (indicated as editor), Duty and Inclination: […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], pages 308–309
The sea was shining like a sheet of glass, […] and the bright sea-weeds and the brilliant corals shone in the depths of that pellucid water, as we rowed over it, like rare and precious gems.
1857, Robert Michael Ballantyne, chapter XVI, in The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean, Boston, Mass.: Phillips, Sampson, and Company, published 1859, page 147
You cannot think what figs / My teeth have met in, / What melons icy-cold / Piled on a dish of gold / Too huge for me to hold, / What peaches with a velvet nap, / Pellucid grapes without one seed: […]
1862, Christina Rossetti, “Goblin Market”, in Goblin Market and Other Poems, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, London: Macmillan & Co., […], page 10
The thick vegetation met overhead, interlacing into a natural pergola, and through this tunnel of verdure in a golden twilight flowed the green, pellucid river, beautiful in itself, but marvelous from the strange tints thrown by the vivid light from above filtered and tempered in its fall.
1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, “‘The Outlying Pickets of the New World’”, in The Lost World […], London, New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, pages 119–120
Most of the pool was quite shallow, but under the cliff where the beach was hollowed out it was four or five feet deep. It was to this part that a swimmer would naturally go, for it formed a beautiful pellucid green pool as clear as crystal.
1926 November 27, Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane”, in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, London: John Murray, […], published June 1927 (May 1952 printing), page 254
(figuratively)
Quotations
[Y]ou never receive me apart from the grammar that establishes my availability to you. If I treat that grammar as pellucid, then I fail to call attention precisely to that sphere of language that establishes and disestablishes intelligibility, and that would be precisely to thwart my own project as I have described it to you here.
1999, Judith Butler, “Preface (1999)”, in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York, N.Y., Abingdon, Oxon., published 2015, page xxvi
noun
plural pellucids
(obsolete, rare) Something which allows the passage of light; a translucent or transparent object.
Quotations
A Pellucid is not ſeen, but percieved[sic] by the privation of Colour. So vve ſee not Air in Air, VVater in VVater, Glaſs in Glaſs, and every Pellucid in an equal Pellucid; and becauſe vve knovv they are not coloured, vve count them to be diaphanous, viz. that may be ſeen, or ſhone thorough.
1729, [Johann Jacob Hainlin], “Of the Vision of Pellucidity or Shining through”, in Venterus Mandey, transl., Synopsis Mathematica Universalis: Or, A Brief System of Mathematics, […], [3rd] edition, London: […] A. Ward, […], paragraph 1, page 686
The true Aſtroites, vvhich in the ſun-ſhine throvvs out a briſk light radiating from one certain point, belongs to the claſs of Pellucids.
, Herman Boerhaave, “Being a Delineation of the Theory. [Of Stones.]”, in [anonymous], transl., Elements of Chemistry. Being the Annual Lectures of Hermann Boerhaave, M.D. […], volume I, London: […] J. Clarke […], and S. Austen […]; and sold by J. Roberts […], page 33