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Let's clarify a few things about limpid. Since the early 1600s, this word has been used in English to describe things that have the soft clearness of pure water. The aquatic connection is not incidental; language scholars believe that limpid probably traces to lympha, a Latin word meaning "water." (That same Latin root is also the source of the English word lymph, the term for the pale liquid that helps maintain the body's fluid balance and that removes bacteria from tissues.) While limpid was used originally to describe liquids free of visible, cloudy material, it didn't take long for the word to gain its figurative sense of "clear and simple in style." And despite its similarity to the unrelated adjective limp—which can be used to describe writing, for example, that lacks spirit or oomph—limpid carries no such negative connotations.
Examples of limpid in a Sentence
Jon Pareles, New York Times, 28 Mar. 2025
Smith mistranslated some words, but her harsher detractors accused her of betraying Han’s limpid, understated style, torquing it so as to hold the attention of Western readers.
—Judith Shulevitz, The Atlantic, 14 Jan. 2025
In Myers’s limpid translation, The Brush feels like a fresh discovery thanks to its narrative range, which insists on exploring both an intimate relationship that’s wrenched apart and the much larger ecosystem in which the separation occurs.
—The Atlantic, 4 Dec. 2024
On a limpid day in April, my hands found the places where Boccioni’s hands had been in 1913.
—Caitlyn Murphy, Hazlitt, 13 Nov. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Limpid.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/limpid. Accessed 2 May. 2025.
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limpid
adjective
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