Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Flickering lightly over or on a surface: lambent moonlight.
- adj. Effortlessly light or brilliant: lambent wit.
- adj. Having a gentle glow; luminous. See Synonyms at bright.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Licking.
- Hence Running along or over a surface, as if in the act of licking; flowing over or along; lapping or bathing; softly bright; gleaming.
Wiktionary
- adj. Brushing or flickering gently over a surface.
- adj. Glowing or luminous, but lacking heat.
- adj. Exhibiting lightness or brilliance of wit; clever or witty without unkindness.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Playing on the surface; touching lightly; gliding over.
- adj. Twinkling or gleaming; fickering.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. softly bright or radiant
Etymologies
- Latin lambēns, lambent-, present participle of lambere, to lick.
Examples
“When he shot the sun at noon, the glow of achievement wrapped him in lambent flame.”
“They have a taste of native earth, beautifully rarefied: to change the metaphor, they illuminate the page with a kind of lambent common sense.”
“He gazes with growing fear and wonder at the lambent pattern of particle tracks, and struggles to absorb the full implications.”
“As Leigh did with 2008's "Happy-Go-Lucky," he and cinematographer Dick Pope have chosen a lush palette and expansive widescreen canvas to draw the audience into Tom and Gerri's lambent world, made all the more seductive by Gary Yershon's lyrical chamber score.”
The Washington Post: Somewhere between settled and unsettling
“An internal light source emits a lambent umber glow so that, in the gallery's dimly lit corner in which it sits, it looks like a meteor that just cratered into the floor.”
“Dominguez's tattered adorableness at the beginning, the way she warbles about what Glen Campbell would call the dreams of an everyday housewife, her lambent and then incandescent love for Seymour, all this she conveys with passion and conviction.”
The Huffington Post: James Scarborough: Little Shop of Horrors, STAGEStheatre, Fullerton
“Salt, when dealt fuckall hands in a bathtub go pruny, grain of fizzy expands, as if to say steam clouds lambent, mid-air still you got to slip your ass out of there.”
“Throughout the Impressionist galleries, the ceilings have been opened, cathedral style, to reveal structural beams, a nod to the Orsay's industrial aesthetic, and also to admit an ingenious blend of artificial and natural illumination that beautifully captures on shimmering, grayish-lavender walls the effect of lambent sunlight.”
“The laughter of her mind played like lambent flame over all about her, and from all about her arose answering laughter.”
“He stared at the ceiling, his eyes a lambent gleam in the darkness.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘lambent’.
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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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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Learned
tutti, donnybrook, lambent, spiel, aberrant, asperity, abstruse, debauch, ebullient, Lebensraum
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Gayle's New Words
hyperborean
dream7184 Always has been one of my favorite words. It sounds and looks like what it means. Apr 21, 2012
john "About a week after 9/11, notebook in hand, I went to a screening of 'Serendipity,' a romance set in a lambent New York, starring John Cusack, Kate Beckinsale and tertiary players from 'Sex and the City.'"
The New York Times, Reflections on That Dreadful Tuesday, by Ed Park, September 6, 2008 Sep 8, 2008
yarb But Princess Nathalie, the cat, was uneasy. Annixter was occupying her own particular chair in which she slept every night. She could not go to sleep, but spied upon him continually, watching his every movement with her lambent, yellow eyes, clear as amber.
- Frank Norris, The Octopus, ch. 3 Aug 9, 2008
acantha Foaled of the white sea-horses,
Washed in the lambent waters of the sun.
(francis thompson, from the night of forebeing) Apr 28, 2008
sionnach young sheep with same-sex proclivities Nov 2, 2007