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"Before them an old man, / wearing a fringe of long white hair, bareheaded, / his glabrous skull reflecting the sun's / light…." No question about it—the bald crown of an old man's head (as described here in William Carlos Williams's poem "Sunday in the Park") is a surface without hairs. Williams's use isn't typical, though. More often glabrous appears in scientific contexts, such as the following description of wheat: "The white glumes are glabrous, with narrow acuminate beaks." And although Latin glaber, our word's source, can mean simply "bald," when glabrous refers to skin with no hair in scientific English, it usually means skin that never had hair (such as the palms of the hands).
Examples of glabrous in a Sentence
Murr Brewster, The Christian Science Monitor, 28 Mar. 2024
Rather than bronzed and glabrous Malibu lifeguards, the striders here are Great Britain’s finest young (male) athletes readying themselves for the 1924 Olympics.
—Martin Fritz Huber, Outside Online, 13 Dec. 2022
In 100 clean-shaven men direct measurement of the area of glabrous skin on the forehead and calvaria was found to be proportional to that of the hairy skin on the lips, cheeks, chin and neck.
—Seriously Science, Discover Magazine, 20 Nov. 2014
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Cite this Entry
“Glabrous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/glabrous. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.
Copy CitationMedical Definition
glabrous
adjective
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