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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
Ariel Bleicher, Quanta Magazine, 16 Apr. 2025
Genetically identical neurons that form Meissner corpuscles for picking up vibrations in glabrous skin, for example, also form lanceolate endings for detecting hair movement in hairy skin.
—Ariel Bleicher, Quanta Magazine, 16 Apr. 2025
The result was a cityscape of relentless sheen, façades as glabrous and ageless as a starlet’s brow.
—Justin Davidson, Curbed, 5 Mar. 2025
The result was a cityscape of relentless sheen, façades as glabrous and ageless as a starlet’s brow.
—Justin Davidson, Curbed, 5 Mar. 2025
Well, not spotted per se, but definitely glabrous and glaucous.
—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
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, 1 Feb. 2016
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
Cite this Entry
“Glabrous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/glabrous. Accessed 2 Jul. 2025.
Copy CitationMedical Definition
glabrous
adjective
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