alighting

present participle of alight
1
as in perching
to come to rest after descending from the air a flock of eight swans circled above, then alighted on the pond

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

2
as in descending
to come down from something (as a vehicle) as she alighted from the train, she momentarily lost her footing

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of alighting Say each word was a bird—alighting briefly, out of reach and then gone again. Leila Chatti september 5, Literary Hub, 5 Sep. 2025 The second was to build what amounts to a nonflammable moat around a home to prevent embers from alighting on anything next to a house that could burn and ignite the structure. Bloomberg, Mercury News, 12 Aug. 2025 Sound of Falling skips back and forth through time, alighting on moments of both horror and grace across a century in the lives of four women—adolescent and adult—inhabiting the same unsettled spaces. Jill Goldsmith, Deadline, 5 Aug. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for alighting
Verb
  • There have been many previous perching drone designs, but these typically have hooks or grasping claws to hold on to branches or powerlines, or use magnets or gecko-like feet to attach to vertical surfaces.
    David Hambling, Forbes.com, 3 Sep. 2025
Verb
  • More than 2,200 elite track and field athletes are descending on Tokyo for the upcoming world championships, but Cooper Lutkenhaus might be the only one to pack homework.
    George Ramsay, CNN Money, 12 Sep. 2025
  • Some lava tubes that wrap across the surface of the Red Planet could make perfect protective shells to position prefabricated human habitats transported aboard the massive Starship capsules that are now counting down to descending on Mars.
    Kevin Holden Platt, Forbes.com, 9 Sep. 2025
Verb
  • The Dell held its own in the primary test, coming close to the Acer’s score but landing behind the Asus.
    Charles Jefferies, PC Magazine, 18 Sep. 2025
  • More Weibo What To Know The two electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOLs) crashed on Tuesday, September 16.
    Robert Birsel Shane Croucher John Feng, MSNBC Newsweek, 17 Sep. 2025
Verb
  • The new cleat should be particularly appealing to racers – who need to snap back in as quickly as possible after dismounting – and to riders who are intimidated by the learning curve involved in using clipless pedals for the first time.
    New Atlas, New Atlas, 28 Aug. 2025
Verb
  • There were men sitting at tables in front of what must have been a bar, three little boys who stopped playing on the pebble beach to watch me, two women also disembarking with baskets and packages from their shopping in Como.
    Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 9 Sep. 2025
  • The other was a sailor who had fallen between two ships while disembarking one and boarding another.
    Curtis Bunn, NBC news, 27 Aug. 2025

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Cite this Entry

“Alighting.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/alighting. Accessed 18 Sep. 2025.

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