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  1. ignis fatuus love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A phosphorescent light that hovers or flits over swampy ground at night, possibly caused by spontaneous combustion of gases emitted by rotting organic matter. Also called friar's lantern, jack-o'-lantern, will-o'-the-wisp, wisp.
  2. n. Something that misleads or deludes; an illusion.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. A meteoric light that sometimes appears in summer and autumn nights, and flits in the air a little above the surface of the earth, chiefly in marshy places, near stagnant waters, or in churchyards. It is generally supposed to be produced by the spontaneous combustion of small jets of gas (carbureted or phosphureted hydrogen) generated by the decomposition of vegetable or animal matter. It has been popularly known in England by such names as will-o'-the-wisp, from its resemblance to a lighted wisp of straw, Jack-o'-lantern, corpse-candle, kit-of-the-candle-stick, etc. Before the introduction of the general drainage of swamp-lands, the ignis fatuus was an ordinary phenomenon in the marshy districts of England. It is still regarded by the peasantry with superstitious awe, as of evil portent, or as the treacherous signal of evil spirits seeking to lure benighted travelers to destruction.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A will o' the wisp.
  2. n. figuratively A delusion, a false hope.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. A phosphorescent light that appears, in the night, over marshy ground, supposed to be occasioned by the decomposition of animal or vegetable substances, or by some inflammable gas; -- popularly called also Will-with-the-wisp, or Will-o'-the-wisp, and Jack-with-a-lantern, or Jack-o'-lantern.
  2. Fig.: A misleading influence; a decoy.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. an illusion that misleads
  2. n. a pale light sometimes seen at night over marshy ground

Etymologies

  1. Modern Latin, from ignis (meaning "fire") + fatuus (meaning "foolish"). Literally "foolish fire". (Wiktionary)
  2. Medieval Latin : Latin ignis, fire + Latin fatuus, foolish. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “Let not the magic arts of that worthless Sanford lead you, like an ignis fatuus from the path of rectitude and virtue!”

    The Coquette, or, The History of Eliza Wharton: A Novel Founded on Fact

  • “And yet they say that the ignis fatuus (as it is called), which sometimes even settles on a wall, has not much heat, perhaps as much as the flame of spirit of wine, which is mild and soft.”

    The New Organon

  • “When thou rannest up Gadshill in the night to catch my horse, if I did not think thou hadst been an ignis fatuus or a ball of wildfire, there's no purchase in money.”

    The First Part of King Henry IV

  • “It appears, however, that of all flame that of spirit of wine is the softest, unless perhaps ignis fatuus be softer, and the flames or sparklings arising from the sweat of animals.”

    The New Organon

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synonyms (4)

Words with the same meaning

  1. decoy
  1. will-o'-the-wisp
  1. jack-o'-lantern
  1. jack-o'-the wisp

hypernyms (7)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. fantasy
  1. fancy
  1. illusion
  1. phantasy
  1. visible radiation
  1. light
  1. visible light

reverse dictionary (25)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. will-o'-the-wisp
  2. ignes fatui
  3. friar's lantern
  4. jack-o'-lantern
  5. wisp
  1. firedrake
  2. fatuous
  3. fen-fire
  4. elf fire
  5. dick-a-tuesday
  1. night-fire
  2. shim
  3. spunkie
  4. death-fire
  5. elf-fire
  1. friar's-lantern
  2. gill-burnt-tail
  3. kit-of-the-candlestick
  4. lantern-jack
  5. death fire
  1. wildfire
  2. night fire
  3. corpse-candle
  4. corpse-light
  5. spunky

tags (1)

Free-form, user-generated categorization

  1. illusion

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tagging (1)

Words tagged ‘ignis fatuus’

  1. hobby lanthorn

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Lists

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  • matthewsouther also called friar's lantern, jack-o'-lantern, will-o'-the-wisp Jun 14, 2009

  • oroboros "With wings wrought from rainbows and eyes from stars, it is but the intangible child of story, song and dream."

    --Agnosticism and Other Essays by Edgar Fawcett

    (q.v.,agnosticism for link) Jul 11, 2008

  • bilby Plural is ignis fatui, as in this marvellous shopping list of faerie beasties:

    "What a happiness this must have been seventy or eighty years ago and upwards, to those chosen few who had the good luck to be born on the eve of this festival of all festivals; when the whole earth was so overrun with ghosts, boggles, bloody-bones, spirits, demons, ignis fatui, brownies, bugbears, black dogs, specters, shellycoats, scarecrows, witches, wizards, barguests, Robin-Goodfellows, hags, night-bats, scrags, breaknecks, fantasms, hobgoblins, hobhoulards, boggy-boes, dobbies, hob-thrusts, fetches, kelpies, warlocks, mock-beggars, mum-pokers, Jemmy-burties, urchins, satyrs, pans, fauns, sirens, tritons, centaurs, calcars, nymphs, imps, incubuses, spoorns, men-in-the-oak, hell-wains, fire-drakes, kit-a-can-sticks, Tom-tumblers, melch-dicks, larrs, kitty-witches, hobby-lanthorns, Dick-a-Tuesdays, Elf-fires, Gyl-burnt-tales, knockers, elves, rawheads, Meg-with-the-wads, old-shocks, ouphs, pad-foots, pixies, pictrees, giants, dwarfs, Tom-pokers, tutgots, snapdragons, sprets, spunks, conjurers, thurses, spurns, tantarrabobs, swaithes, tints, tod-lowries, Jack-in-the-Wads, mormos, changelings, redcaps, yeth-hounds, colt-pixies, Tom-thumbs, black-bugs, boggarts, scar-bugs, shag-foals, hodge-pochers, hob-thrushes, bugs, bull-beggars, bygorns, bolls, caddies, bomen, brags, wraiths, waffs, flay-boggarts, fiends, gallytrots, imps, gytrashes, patches, hob-and-lanthorns, gringes, boguests, bonelesses, Peg-powlers, pucks, fays, kidnappers, gallybeggars, hudskins, nickers, madcaps, trolls, robinets, friars' lanthorns, silkies, cauld-lads, death-hearses, goblins, hob-headlesses, bugaboos, kows, or cowes, nickies, nacks necks, waiths, miffies, buckies, ghouls, sylphs, guests, swarths, freiths, freits, gy-carlins Gyre-carling, pigmies, chittifaces, nixies, Jinny-burnt-tails, dudmen, hell-hounds, dopple-gangers, boggleboes, bogies, redmen, portunes, grants, hobbits, hobgoblins, brown-men, cowies, dunnies, wirrikows, alholdes, mannikins, follets, korreds, lubberkins, cluricauns, kobolds, leprechauns, kors, mares, korreds, puckles korigans, sylvans, succubuses, blackmen, shadows, banshees, lian-hanshees, clabbernappers, Gabriel-hounds, mawkins, doubles, corpse lights or candles, scrats, mahounds, trows, gnomes, sprites, fates, fiends, sibyls, nicknevins, whitewomen, fairies, thrummy-caps, cutties, and nisses, and apparitions of every shape, make, form, fashion, kind and description, that there was not a village in England that had not its own peculiar ghost. Nay, every lone tenement, castle, or mansion-house, which could boast of any antiquity had its bogle, its specter, or its knocker. The churches, churchyards, and crossroads were all haunted. Every green lane had its boulder-stone on which an apparition kept watch at night. Every common had its circle of fairies belonging to it. And there was scarcely a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit!"
    - 'The Denham Tracts' vol. 2, Michael Aislabie Denham, 1895. Jan 4, 2008

  • minerva But, alas! my dear, we see that the wisest people are not to be depended upon when love, like an ignis fatuus, holds up its misleading lights before their eyes.

    Anna Howe to Clarissa Harlowe, Clarissa by Samuel Richardson Jan 4, 2008

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‘ignis fatuus’ has been looked up 1822 times, loved by 3 people, added to 27 lists, commented on 4 times, and is not a valid Scrabble word.