Hold one thing in mind and the whole word follows: a piece of soft white stone at a window. It is cool and heavy in the hand, the surface is smooth with no grain to catch on, and where the light meets the thin edge the stone glows a little instead of stopping the light. It is soft enough to cut with hand tools, so people have been it into small jars, lamps and figures for thousands of years. Everything else the word does is either that stone, something cut from it, or something borrowing its look.
The source traces it back through Middle English alabastre and Latin alabaster to Greek alabastros, an earlier form of which meant a small vase without handles for keeping perfume. Those little jars were cut from this stone, and the name moved from the jar to the material.
來源把這個字一路追回去：中古英文 alabastre、古法文、拉丁文 alabaster，再到希臘文 alábastros，更早的形式指的是「裝香膏、沒有把手的小瓶子」。那種小瓶子就是用這種軟石雕成的，名字後來從瓶子搬到了石頭身上。這也解釋了為什麼今天講到它，浮現的多半是小器物，而不是大建築。
Wiktionary (kaikki extract, source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:1044412377:12991): Middle English alabastre < Old French < Latin alabaster ("box for perfumes or unguents") < Ancient Greek ἀλάβαστρος / ἀλάβαστος ("vase without handles for storing perfumes").
Three branches
石頭本身，以及用它雕出來的東西
這一支就是畫面本身：手上那塊石頭，還有師傅從它身上切下來的成品。
noun · C1
A soft white or lightly coloured stone that light can pass part of the way through. It is easy to cut, so it is used for statues, lamps, jars, bowls and other things made for decoration.
雪花石膏
用這種石頭做的
把石頭的名字直接搬到東西前面，說明它是從那塊石頭切出來的。
adjective · C1
Made of alabaster. It goes in front of the thing itself — an alabaster box, an alabaster lamp — and names what the object is cut from.
雪花石膏做的
像那塊石頭的白
這一支不再指石頭，而是把石頭當畫面借走：柔白、光滑、還透著一點光。
adjective · C2
Pale white and smooth, the way the stone is. It is used mostly in writing, about things such as fog, snow light, a painted surface, or a person's skin.
如雪花石膏般白皙光滑的