Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. An often portable case with transparent or translucent sides for holding and protecting a light.
- n. A decorative casing for a light, often of paper.
- n. A light and its protective or decorative case.
- n. The room at the top of a lighthouse where the light is located.
- n. Obsolete A lighthouse.
- n. A structure built on top of a roof or dome with open or windowed walls to admit light and air.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A case, generally transparent or translucent, inclosing a light and protecting it from the wind and rain, and either portable or fixed. The earliest form appears to have been a collapsing corrugated tube of some semitransparent fabric inclosing a lamp or candle. This form snrvives in the Chinese paper lanterns. Lanterns have been made of horn, talc, mica, perforated metals, oiled fabrics, paper, and glass.
- n. The glass casing surrounding the lamp of a lighthouse and forming the upper member of the structure.
- n. In architecture, specifically, an upright skylight in the roof of a building. It is distinguished from an ordinary skylight in that it has vertical sides. Of this nature is the open tower often placed, especially in English church architecture, at the junction of the cross in a cruciform plan. Such a lantern has the whole or a considerable part of the interior open to view from below, and receives light from a range of windows extending entirely around it. The name is also applied to a more or less open construction on the top of a tower, or crowning a dome, although not serving to admit light to the interior; also to a louver. See cuts under
dome and domical. - n. In the quadrant electrometer, the part of the case of the instrument which surrounds the mirror and suspension-fibers.
- n. A device for inclosing fabrics in the process of dyeing, to fix the colors by the aid of steam.
- n. A workmen's name for a short perforated core used in making hollow castings.
- n. A kind of cog-wheel. See lantern-wheel.
- n. The whiff, a fish, which is semi-transparent when held up against the light.
- n. The Trigla obscura, a fish of the subfamily Triglinæ. Also called lantern-gurnard.
- To furnish with a lantern; light as by means of a lantern: as, to lantern a lighthouse.
- To put to death by hanging to a lamp-post (French lanterne): a frequent incident during the first French revolution.
- n. The misshapen proboscis (formerly supposed to be luminous) of many tropical Fulgoridæ or so-called ‘lantern-flies.’
Wiktionary
- n. A case of translucent or transparent material made to protect a flame, or light, used to illuminate its surroundings.
- v. transitive To furnish with a lantern.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Something inclosing a light, and protecting it from wind, rain, etc.; -- sometimes portable, as a closed vessel or case of horn, perforated tin, glass, oiled paper, or other material, having a lamp or candle within; sometimes fixed, as the glazed inclosure of a street light, or of a lighthouse light.
- n. An open structure of light material set upon a roof, to give light and air to the interior.
- n. A cage or open chamber of rich architecture, open below into the building or tower which it crowns.
- n. A smaller and secondary cupola crowning a larger one, for ornament, or to admit light; such as the lantern of the cupola of the Capitol at Washington, or that of the Florence cathedral.
- n. (Mach.) A lantern pinion or trundle wheel. See Lantern pinion (below).
- n. (Steam Engine) A kind of cage inserted in a stuffing box and surrounding a piston rod, to separate the packing into two parts and form a chamber between for the reception of steam, etc.; -- called also
lantern brass . - n. (Founding) A perforated barrel to form a core upon.
- n. (Zoöl.) See Aristotle's lantern.
- v. To furnish with a lantern.
WordNet 3.0
- n. light in a transparent protective case
Etymologies
- Middle English (13th century), via Old French lanterne from Latin lanterna ("lantern"), itself a corruption of Ancient Greek λαμπτήρ ("torch") (see lamp, λάμπω) by influence of Latin lucerna ("lamp"). The spelling lanthorn was current during the 16th to 19th centuries and originates with a folk etymology associating the word with the use of horn as translucent cover. For the verb, compare French lanterner to hang at the lamp-post. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old French lanterne, from Latin lanterna, from Greek lamptēr, from lampein, to shine. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Imagine scouts scouring the woods with a lantern -- with a _lantern_, Renny!”
“Ignoring his role and starting with another lantern is just silly.”
““Tá álík” = hanging lamps, often in lantern shape with coloured glass and profuse ornamentation; the Maroccan are now familiar to”
“After the show there was a traditional Chinese game called lantern-riddles.”
“I snatched a lantern from the wall, lighted it, and followed.”
“It's what an engine whistle or the swing of a lantern is to us trainmen, and I'm glad our boys play at something so sensible.”
“Taking down a lantern from a nail by the door, he went out, as was his nightly habit, to look at his grey mare Hannah.”
“Science employs the same term: it calls the lantern-bearer, _Lampyris noctiluca_, LIN.”
“I stayed only an hour, but did manage to find one treasure: a 19th-century gold gilt and mesh petite hanging lantern from a French church.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘lantern’.
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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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TECH - furniture
The universe as IKEA sees it.
Furniture, haberdashery, household articles and a lot more. The bulk of the list (750 entries) are IKEA articles in the original English version IKEA use...active-response c..., add-on-unit for s..., adjustable slatte..., alarm clock, alkaline battery, anti-slip socks, anti-slip underlay, armchair, armrest, artificial flower, artificial garland, artificial plant ... and 830 more...
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More Light!
light, lamp, Betty lamp, lightbulb, floor lamp, lantern, candle, gas mantle, Davy lamp, Geordie lamp, limelight, spotlight and 50 more...
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What's That Pokémon Name?
Words used to create the names of Pokémon, which are usually portmanteaux.
bulb, dinosaur, ivy, venus, char, salamander, squirt, turtle, blast, tortoise, water, caterpillar and 525 more...
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Scriptie: Master and Commander
Nice ambient words from the movie. (With apologies to Patrick O'Brian.) Aaaah, life at sea...aboard a hulk of the British navy in 1805...
surprise, acheron, guns, souls, oceans, battlefields, prize, burn, sink, privateer, hammock, lantern and 118 more...
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colleen's words
yellow, green, pie, blue, fur, people, incense, book, brown, avuncular, mountain, fog and 1316 more...
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Castles and Keeps
Shamelessly ripped off from this site and others (to be named hereinafter). (Fair warning: for my own edification, I may add definitions/comments from the site, but you might want to just go there ...
abutment, adulterine, allure, angle-spur, apse, arbalest, arbalestier, arbalist, arcade, arch, armoury, arrow slit and 410 more...
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Words Covered in Faery Dust (L)
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
labyrinth, lace, lad, lady fingers, lagoon, lamb, lament, lammas, lantern, larkspur, lass, lauds and 92 more...
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Dain's Words
rabble, terminus, archaic, atavism, demiurge, waylay, syzygy, jocoserious, quark, entropy, cinnabar, shamble and 912 more...
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Words
Words I like.
jejune, eunoia, swallow, spelunk, milquetoast, echolalia, trumble, toothsome, synecdoche, taciturn, kerfuffle, aleatoric and 98 more...
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mandarine's Words
antepenultimate, metonymy, synecdoche, pop, kern, inherit, clique, scrumptious, macerate, murmur, kerning, veranda and 1068 more...
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Some Words I Love to Use
arcology, strumpet, crux, confected, pedant, bluestocking, cogitation, incensed, lovecraftian, cygnet, dactyl, adytum and 539 more...
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librarygoblin's words
crystal, ghost, mist, snow, labyrinth, citadel, tomb, mystery, arcane, conundrum, echo, dynamo and 389 more...
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Fun
harangue, quixotic, persnickety, lachrymose, kerfuffle, zephyr, chthonic, vixen, fiend, scoundrel, cricket, belfry and 193 more...
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Benandanti
All things Light
aureole, aura, aurora borealis, aglow, lucent, lambent, radiant, bright, burn, fire, solstice, brazier and 94 more...
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fragile/lovely words
incandescent, scintillating, sublime, stellar, fragile, bones, illuminate, luscious, celestial, crepuscular, penumbra, wanderlust and 111 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for lantern.

bilby
I do not resemble your other lovers, my lady
should another give you a cloud
I give you rain
Should he give you a lantern, I
will give you the moon
Should he give you a branch
I will give you the trees
And if another gives you a ship
I shall give you the journey.
- Nizar Qabbani, 'Love Compared'. Nov 10, 2008