Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The emission of visible light by a hot object.
- n. The light emitted by an incandescent object.
- n. A high degree of emotion, intensity, or brilliance.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The condition of being incandescent; glowing heat. Rarely candescence.
Wiktionary
- n. physics the emission of visible light by a hot body
- n. the light so emitted
- n. by extension great emotion, especially anger
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A white heat, or the glowing or luminous whiteness of a body caused by intense heat.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the phenomenon of light emission by a body as its temperature is raised
- n. light from heat
Examples
“If the column of metal intended for hydrogenation of the products of incandescence is raised to a temperature of more than 300°C, then a proportion of the aromatic hydrocarbons is retained and the liquid obtained is analogous to Galician petroleum.”
“The great current density in the coiled-coil filament with much heat development results in bright incandescence, that is to say in the generation of visible light.”
“-- When referring to methods of obtaining artificial light by means of processes involving combustion or oxidation, the term "incandescence" is usually limited to those forms of burner in which some extraneous substance, such as a "mantle," is raised to a brilliant white heat.”
“We should be heating it to 33 in Newtonian degrees - which is the sacred number for the boiling point of water - and through a process known as incandescence we should be able to read a top secret inscription that has been cunningly hidden on the surface. ”
“Influenced by the French Barbizon School and later by the Impressionist movement, the artists captured the particular conditions of Skagen, where water on three sides creates a special incandescence.”
“Those who aren't addicts or don't use the site at all — I'd call myself a cautious user — may be tempted to see Facebook as a not-so-hot notion fanned into incandescence by narcissistic adolescents with nothing better to do than tell one another who they are in terms of what they like, what they buy and where they go.”
The Wall Street Journal: 'Social Network': Password Is Perfection
“She's played by Adepero Oduye, who gives a performance, first heartbreaking and later thrilling, that swings between the darkness of spiritual isolation and the incandescence of self-discovery, with quiet interludes of affecting earnestness.”
The Wall Street Journal: 'Pariah' Stands Apart—As Fresh Teen Tale
“He incorporated the old shoe in the picture as a gesture toward Van Gogh; he had the sense that his eye was bringing all the world's psychosis to everything on which it fell; the objects in the painting seem lit by a savage incandescence, the light comes from the direction of the artist.”
“And Mulligan Jacobs's face thrust another inch closer on its twisted neck, while all his concentrated rage seemed on the verge of bursting into incandescence.”
“Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, practical incandescence, and many other improved devices.”
To Be An American: Part Two - The Scientists | Heretical Ideas Magazine
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘incandescence’.
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Iaan
dirigisme, dystopia, cacotopia, ex ante, veritable, indefatigable, curmudgeon, desultory, antediluvian, transmogrify, pendent, elongate and 269 more...
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my fab list
blowsabella, aperçu, froideur, salubrious, abject, gallipot, mumchance, wainscot, virago, macerate, lascivious, clandestine and 181 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Not 250 Spelling Words Again
Yet more spelling words for intermediate to advanced spellers.
ihi, kyoodle, heimin, feis, menarche, cordwainer, gherao, zythum, accidie, anastomosis, boustrophedon, oleum and 238 more...
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[Uni][verse]
to be used.
windfall, alkahest, tektite, cislunar, conatus, pansophy, universe, macrocosm, perfect storm, star-scattered, cynosure, stellate and 22 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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Poetry
lucid, silhouette, ethereal, illumination, serenity, requiem, adieu, celestial, esoteric, myriad, ebony, kaleidoscope and 16 more...
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intueri's Words
inveigle, dolorous, archly, feckless, resplendent, concatenation, peripatetic, delightful, cookie, fey, ephemeral, effervescent and 347 more...
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Pretty Words
Words that sound pretty.
ethereal, ephemeral, iridescent, shimmer, wisp, whisper, charisma, crescent, azure, mystery, fantasy, miracle and 142 more...
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eggplantia5's Words
scintillate, marvel, cranberry, oscillate, triumph, bamboozle, grimace, magical, book, hexagon, cipher, compendium and 2727 more...
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Personal Vocabulary List
All my favourite words that I come across!
veritable, incongruence, rigamorole, letcherous, revolting, repulsive, reputrid, rapatious, forays, guise, placate, paradigm and 1162 more...
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Worthy Wordie
words learnt from the Internet
unthink, meme, logophile, netiquette, onomatopoeia, singularity, oed, johnson's dictionary, man friday, lewis carroll, ontology, pro bono and 143 more...
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zzyyxx's Words
plethora, drout, functional, rye, wring, doubt, cognative, weird, gnaw, surcease, rend, languish and 438 more...
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Favorites
machiavellian, mercurial, deus ex machina, synecdoche, litotes, phallic, freudian, metonymy, chrestomathy, falsifiable, gestalt, truthiness and 211 more...
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cloudjuice's Words
schadenfreude, sordid, promulgate, erratic, erroneous, amalgamate, sesquipedalian, incongruous, psychosis, etymology, simulacrum, serendipity and 988 more...
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Test-words
rarefy, occlude, bolt, lambaste, career, careen, largesse, enormity, neologism, quizzical, sibyl, euphony and 105 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for incandescence.

knitandpurl "But now the guests for the reception were beginning to arrive and the lady of the house was seated not far from the door—erect and proud in her quasi-regal majesty, her eyes ablaze with their own incandescence—between two unattractive highnesses and the Spanish Ambassadress."
--Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 48 of the Modern Library paperback edition Feb 2, 2009
sera incandescence is refulgent Aug 13, 2007