Adjective: glabrous
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more glabrous |
| Superlative | most glabrous |
Sample Sentences
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[T]he Vernacula or French Elm, whoſe leaves are thicker, and more florid, glabrous and ſmooth, delighting in the lower and moiſter grounds, where they will ſometimes riſe to above an hundred foot in height; […] [1670, John Evelyn, “. Chapter IV. Of the Elm.”, in Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-trees and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesties Dominions. […], 2nd edition, London: […] Jo[hn] Martyn, and Ja[mes] Allestry, printers to the Royal Society, →OCLC, page 28:]
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[Crotalaria obtecta] Stems tall, erect, branched: stipules not decurrent: leaves simple, usually glabrous on the upper side: […] legumes oblong, many-seeded, glabrous or softly pubescent. (Preliminary Publication of the Flora of the Peninsula of Oriential India) [1834, Robert Wight, G[eorge] A[rnott] Walker-Arnott, “Order LVI.—Leguminosæ. Juss.”, in Prodromus Floræ Peninsulæ Indiæ Orientalis: Containing Abridged Descriptions of the Plants Found in the Peninsula of British India, Arranged According to the Natural System [Preliminary Publication of the Flora of the Peninsula of Oriential India], volume I, London: Parbury, Allen, & Co., →OCLC, paragraph 572, page 186:]
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'I am bound by precedent,' said the First Lord, turning a vast glabrous expressionless face from Harte to Sir Joseph. [1973, Patrick O’Brian, chapter 1, in HMS Surprise, London: HarperCollinsPublishers, published 2002, →ISBN, page 2:]
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Adriaan rose, pulling out his limbering glabrous cock, his eyes happy. [1974, Guy Davenport, Tatlin!: Six Stories, New York, N.Y.: Scribner, →ISBN, page 190:]
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The glabrous old head cranks round on him, stiff and slow, until the clouded eyes draw level with his own. [1981, T[homas] Coraghessan Boyle, “Mo O Mo Inta Allo”, in Water Music (The Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series), New York, N.Y.; London: Penguin Books, published 1983, →ISBN, part 1 (The Niger), page 143:]
Adjectives inflected like glabrous
priest-ridden,
unreposed,
evadible,
dissentious,
dissentient,
unforesighted,
egocentrical,
unephemeral,
unennobling,
mensuralist,
flocculent,
unseductive,
whoopsy,
whooshy,
surrogate,
Nicodian,
unrepaired,
prismatoidal,
renorenal,
unseducible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
From Latin glaber (“smooth; bald, hairless”) + English -ous (suffix forming adjectives, denoting possession or presence of a quality in any degree, commonly in abundance). Glaber is ultimately derived from Proto-Indo-European *gʰleh₂dʰ- (“smooth; bright, shining”), possibly from *ǵʰelh₂- (“to shine”). See: Latin Adjectives '
glaber'.