Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Having no hairs or pubescence; smooth.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Smooth; having a surface devoid of hair or pubescence: used chiefly in zoölogy and botany.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Smooth; having a surface without hairs or any unevenness.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective smooth, hairless, bald.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective having no hair or similar growth; smooth

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Latin glaber, glabr-, bald.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin glaber ("smooth, hairless, bald")

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Examples

  • Anyone can imitate him, in mediocre fashion, by tossing around words like "glabrous" and "foetor."

    Boing Boing 2007

  • Everyone's favourite glabrous, middle-brow, populist television philosopher, Alain de Botton is back with a book on The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.

    Archive 2009-04-01 Gordon McCabe 2009

  • Its practitioners don't really insist that the guys behind the microphone be either gray or glabrous, but they do – implicitly – assume that they've evolved on a world that, like Earth, is wrapped in oceans and an atmosphere.

    Alien life – but not as we know it 2010

  • To his admirers, and they are legion, the glabrous Ailes is something else entirely — a valiant freedom-fighter standing up to the perfidious liberal media elite.

    Meet the fantastic Mr Fox 2010

  • Abies grandis is distinguished from the closely similar A. amabilis by bud scales slightly pubescent or glabrous (vs densely pubescent), upper surface of twigs easily visible (vs concealed by the needles), and variably colored mature seed cones (vs purple).

    Grand fir 2009

  • You politely hide your shock at his glabrous head.

    Kim Stagliano: You Can Call Me Angry, Just Don't Call Him Autistic 2008

  • Var. angustifolia; leaves linear; calyx and pedicel glabrous; corolla outside glabrous or scantily hairy.

    The Journals of John McDouall Stuart 2007

  • Dodonaea microzyga, F.M. Somewhat viscid, almost glabrous; leaves with 1 to 2 pairs of small obovate-cuneate leaflets; in front rounded, or truncate, or retuse, or sometimes 3-toothed, flat at the margin; rachis dilated; fruit-bearing pedicels solitary; capsules 3 to 4-celled; valves cymbeo-semiorbicular, all around broadly winged; the wing rounded-blunt on both extremities; dissepiments persistent with the columella.

    The Journals of John McDouall Stuart 2007

  • If they are making ‎ such a dastardly accusation, I personally shall be in the fore of the attack against such a ‎ glabrous innuendo (I'm not sure if that word is right here, but it sounded nice)!

    A Frisson of Freedom 2007

  • The light of the afternoon sun came glancing along the vast pillar, and lit its dying hues — cinnamon, purple, and glabrous red, and soft gray where the lichens grew.

    Erema Richard Doddridge 2004

Comments

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  • "Stephen, two paces ahead, with his eyes now on the level of the platform, slowly crouched down, and turning he whispered, 'Ape. A small blue-black ape.'

    "The weak hammering started again and they crept on, Stephen very cautiously making room for Martin, who after a moment murmured 'Glabrous' in his ear."

    --Patrick O'Brian, The Nutmeg of Consolation, 246

    March 9, 2008

  • "This species has a bluish-tinged body completely covered in white flecking in the typical species, though completely glabrous green variants are also seen without any of the body flecking."

    - Kevin G. Belmonte, 'The woolly Astrophytums', The Philippine Star, 6 June 2009.

    July 22, 2009

  • "Unbriefed on the subject of the glabrous playwright and novelist, the president looked wildly about for his minister of culture."

    The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, p 4 of the FSG hardcover edition

    October 13, 2012

  • This Fall I took extended vacation
    From toilsome outdoor titivation.
    The garden left scabrous
    Is now glowingly glabrous,
    And swollen in snowy hibernation.

    January 21, 2014