| / English Dictionary |
RADIANCE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The quality of being bright and sending out rays of light
Synonyms:
effulgence; radiance; radiancy; refulgence; refulgency; shine
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("radiance" is a kind of...):
brightness (the location of a visual perception along a continuum from black to white)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "radiance"):
gleam; gleaming; glow; lambency (an appearance of reflected light)
luster; lustre; sheen; shininess (the visual property of something that shines with reflected light)
burnish; gloss; glossiness; polish (the property of being smooth and shiny)
Derivation:
radiant (radiating or as if radiating light)
radiate (cause to be seen by emitting light as if in rays)
radiate (send out rays or waves)
Sense 2
Meaning:
The amount of electromagnetic radiation leaving or arriving at a point on a surface
Synonyms:
glow; glowing; radiance
Classified under:
Nouns denoting natural phenomena
Hypernyms ("radiance" is a kind of...):
light; visible light; visible radiation ((physics) electromagnetic radiation that can produce a visual sensation)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "radiance"):
aureole; corona (the outermost region of the sun's atmosphere; visible as a white halo during a solar eclipse)
Sense 3
Meaning:
An attractive combination of good health and happiness
Example:
the radiance of her countenance
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("radiance" is a kind of...):
felicity; happiness (state of well-being characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy)
good health; healthiness (the state of being vigorous and free from bodily or mental disease)
Derivation:
radiate (experience a feeling of well-being or happiness, as from good health or an intense emotion)
Context examples:
God bless me, the man seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old story of Dr. Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent?
(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
I observed, however, that Mr. Spenlow's proctorial gown and stiff cravat took Peggotty down a little, and inspired her with a greater reverence for the man who was gradually becoming more and more etherealized in my eyes every day, and about whom a reflected radiance seemed to me to beam when he sat erect in Court among his papers, like a little lighthouse in a sea of stationery.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
In the meanwhile also the black ground was covered with herbage, and the green banks interspersed with innumerable flowers, sweet to the scent and the eyes, stars of pale radiance among the moonlight woods; the sun became warmer, the nights clear and balmy; and my nocturnal rambles were an extreme pleasure to me, although they were considerably shortened by the late setting and early rising of the sun, for I never ventured abroad during daylight, fearful of meeting with the same treatment I had formerly endured in the first village which I entered.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
Each time he murmured it, her face shimmered before him, suffusing the foul wall with a golden radiance.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
St. John said these words as he pronounced his sermons, with a quiet, deep voice; with an unflushed cheek, and a coruscating radiance of glance.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
A number of lamps shining through tinted shades bathed the whole great room before us in a ruddy radiance.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
He held out his hand and displayed upon the centre of the palm a brilliantly scintillating blue stone, rather smaller than a bean in size, but of such purity and radiance that it twinkled like an electric point in the dark hollow of his hand.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
When my father returned from Milan, he found playing with me in the hall of our villa a child fairer than pictured cherub—a creature who seemed to shed radiance from her looks and whose form and motions were lighter than the chamois of the hills.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
His mind was a blank, save for the intervals when unsummoned memory pictures took form and color and radiance just under his eyelids.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
I could see clearly a room with a sanded floor, clean scoured; a dresser of walnut, with pewter plates ranged in rows, reflecting the redness and radiance of a glowing peat-fire.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
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