glabrous : M-W's Word of the Day

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http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/book.pl?scrabdic.htm&3
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The Word of the Day for December 18 is:

glabrous \GLAY-brus\ adjective
: smooth; especially : having a surface without hairs or projections

Example sentence:
The nectarine is a glabrous variety of peach, and not, as is often thought, a hybrid of peach and plum.

Did you know?
"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." William'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 accuminate 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 our palms).

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