brightness

noun bright·ness

|Updated on: 22 Jun 2018

Examples: brightness in a Sentence

Definition of brightness

1 a : the quality or state of being bright; also : an instance of such a quality or state

b : luminance

2 : the attribute of light-source colors by which emitted light is ordered continuously from light to dark in correlation with its intensity — compare hue 2c, ¹lightness 2, saturation 4

Examples of brightness in a Sentence

the brightness of the sunshine made me squint after an afternoon spent in a darkened movie theater

Recent Examples of brightness from the Web

MacOS Mojave’s Dark Mode may be particularly useful at night, when the brightness and lightness of macOS’ default theme can be overwhelming.

— alex fitzpatrick, Time, "Apple's New Mac Feature Will Be Great If You Use Your Computer at Night a Lot," 4 June 2018
The museum has already taken some steps to protect the artwork, like installing smart LEDs last year which allow them to control the light spectrum hitting the paintings and more finely control the brightness and hours of light paintings receive.

— chris stirewalt, Fox News, "There's more to primary day than California," 4 June 2018
The museum has already taken some steps to protect the artwork, like installing smart LEDs last year which allow them to control the light spectrum hitting the paintings and more finely control the brightness and hours of light paintings receive.

— jason daley, Smithsonian, "X-Rays Show That Van Gogh’s Sunflowers Will One Day Wilt," 1 June 2018
Also new to the camera is a super bright mode that detects when a scene is too dark for the normal aperture and automatically increases the brightness digitally to capture more detail.

— michael simon, PCWorld, "LG unveils the G7 ThinQ with more screen and an AI-infused camera," 2 May 2018
For the local universe, these mile markers are Cepheid variable stars, which periodically pulse and share the same intrinsic brightness.

— National Geographic, "How 1.7 Billion Stars Were Mapped With Dazzling 3-D Precision," 25 Apr. 2018
All of that should be written out of the record, cast into shadow by the searing brightness of what went before.

— rory smith, New York Times, "Arsène Wenger Will Leave Arsenal, Proudly but Imperfectly," 20 Apr. 2018
Over the course of its two-year mission, TESS will monitor the brightness of more than 200,000 stars, waiting to observe tiny dips in starlight known as transits.

— amy thompson, Scientific American, "What’s Next for TESS, NASA’s New Exoplanet Hunter?," 19 Apr. 2018
The brightness in the room all depends on the mood.

— al saracevic, San Francisco Chronicle, "Warriors win, but still missing Curry and consistency," 16 Apr. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'brightness.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

First Known Use of brightness

before 12th century

in the meaning defined at sense 1a

See Words from the same year

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brightness Synonyms

Medical Dictionary

brightness

noun bright·ness \ ˈbrīt-nəs \

medical Definition of brightness

: the one of the three psychological dimensions of color perception by which visual stimuli are ordered continuously from light to dark and which is correlated with light intensity — compare hue, saturation 4a