Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Designating color perceived to have zero saturation and therefore no hue, such as neutral grays, white, or black.
- adjective Refracting light without spectral color separation.
- adjective Biology Difficult to stain with standard dyes. Used in reference to cells or tissues.
- adjective Music Having only the diatonic tones of the scale.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Destitute of color; free from coloration; transmitting light without decomposing it into its constituent colors: as, an achromatic lens or telescope.
- In biology: Colorless; hyaline.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective (Opt.) Free from color; transmitting light without decomposing it into its primary colors.
- adjective (Biol.) Uncolored; not absorbing color from a fluid; -- said of tissue.
- adjective (Opt.) a lens composed usually of two separate lenses, a convex and concave, of substances having different refractive and dispersive powers, as crown and flint glass, with the curvatures so adjusted that the chromatic aberration produced by the one is corrected by other, and light emerges from the compound lens undecomposed.
- adjective See
Prism . - adjective one in which the chromatic aberration is corrected, usually by means of a compound or achromatic object glass, and which gives images free from extraneous color.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective optics Free from color; transmitting light without color-related distortion.
- adjective Containing components such as
achromatic lenses and prisms, designed to prevent color-related distortion. - adjective biology Uncolored; not absorbing color from a fluid; -- said of tissue
- adjective music Having only the
diatonic notes of thescale ; not modified byaccidentals . - adjective Being achromatic in subject
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective having no hue
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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This might not necessarily be a real appearance for it is conceivable that such traces of colour might be due to the telescopes employed not having been truly achromatic, that is, not sufficiently corrected for colour; but making every allowance for this possible source of mistake there yet remains proof that the colour which has often been seen has been real.
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In a refracting telescope we have to employ what is known as the achromatic combination, consisting of one lens of flint glass and one of crown glass, adjusted to suit each other with extreme care.
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Of course the presence of either of these defects is certainly and correctly indicated by the appearance of one or the other of the colors, under certain circumstances; but the simple visibility of prismatic color is by no means a reliable indication of over or under correction of color, and, indeed, to the honor of our opticians, it may be stated that very few objectives are made that cannot justly be called achromatic in the general sense of the term.
Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 Various
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Although with the increase in power it is correspondingly difficult to combine all these corrections in one objective, they are brought to a high pitch of excellence in the present-day "achromatic" objectives, and so remove the necessity for the use of the higher priced and less durable apochromatic lenses.
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Her achromatic breasts sway freely inside the full halter and I see her hips dance, suggesting that I do something.
The Color of Warm and Cold Paul de Denus 2011
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While designing the achromatic objective lens for a telescope, he saw the spectrum of sunlight as it passed through a thin slit and the dark emission lines.
Weekend SkyWatcher's Forecast: March 5-7, 2010 | Universe Today 2010
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His achromatic objective lens is still used in modern telescopes.
Weekend SkyWatcher's Forecast: March 5-7, 2010 | Universe Today 2010
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A nation's institutional memory is invariably simplistic and achromatic, with good guys in white hats and bad guys in black.
Phillip Martin: Hiroshima: The Big Payback or A Lesson Forward? 2010
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Also, belated greetings to achromatic, and Hippo Birdie Dates to Marilee!
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A nation's institutional memory is invariably simplistic and achromatic, with good guys in white hats and bad guys in black.
Phillip Martin: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima and the Need to Readjust Our Historical Lenses 2009
chained_bear commented on the word achromatic
"'...I shall keep in as close with the shore as can be, and you shall look at the creatures with my best achromatic glass,'—reaching for a splendid five-lens Dollond, an instrument that Stephen was never allowed to use, because of his tendency to drop telescopes into the sea."
--Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World, 277
February 23, 2008
Socrates commented on the word achromatic
“Knotted at her throat she wore a lilac scarf that even in the achromatic sunshine cast its color up to her face and down around her moving feet in a lilac shadow.”
TENDER IS THE NIGHT
February 24, 2013