Word of the Day

: February 4, 2014

refulgence

noun rih-FULL-junss

What It Means

: a radiant or resplendent quality or state : brilliance

refulgence in Context

The winning photo captured the refulgence of a full moon on a clear autumn night.

"The sound the Philadelphia players mustered from the heroic opening bars of Brahms's Third Symphony was the orchestra's own, showing the richness and refulgence that are this institution's legacy." - From a review by Steve Smith in The New York Times, April 30, 2012

Did You Know?

"The full bow of the crescent moon peeps above the plain and shoots its gleaming arrows far and wide, filling the earth with a faint refulgence, as the glow of a good man's deeds shines for a while upon his little world after his sun has set, lighting the fainthearted travellers who follow on towards a fuller dawn." So British author Sir Henry Rider Haggard described the light of the moon in King Solomon's Mines. Haggard's example reflects both the modern meaning and the history of "refulgence." That word derives from Latin "refulgēre," which means "to shine brightly" and which is itself a descendant of the verb "fulgēre," meaning "to shine." By the way, "fulgēre" also underlies "effulgence," a shining synonym of "refulgence."