Transparency

How to spell transparency

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce transparency

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does transparency mean?

1. nounThe quality of being open, clear, or easy to see through, whether physically or in the sense of honest and accountable conduct.
2. nounA clear plastic sheet bearing an image or text, designed to be shown using an overhead projector.

Transparency in a sentence

• The company promised greater transparency about how it spends donations.

• He placed the next transparency on the projector and dimmed the lights.

• Voters demanded full transparency from the local council.

• The lecturer stored each transparency in a labelled folder.

Where does transparency come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb parere, meaning 'to appear' or 'to come into view', combined with the prefix trans-, meaning 'through' or 'across'. Medieval Latin formed transparere, literally 'to appear through', describing the way light shows through a material. From this came the Late Latin adjective transparens, which passed into Old French and then into English in the fifteenth century as 'transparent'. The noun 'transparency' was built by swapping the ending for -ency, the same noun-forming pattern seen in 'consistency' and 'frequency'. Over time the literal sense of letting light through extended into a figurative one: openness in business or government, where information is allowed to 'show through' rather than being hidden. The buried Latin par- (appear) is also why the spelling keeps the tricky -par- in the middle rather than the -per- many writers expect.

How the word is built

• trans- (through, across)
• par- (from Latin parere: to appear, come into view)
• -ency (noun-forming suffix indicating a quality or state)