Monday, May 14, 2012

Rutilant

As the summer approaches and the sunsets dip into the mid-evening hours, the rutilant light in the western sky softens the intensity of the day.  (Practicing a new word as do the authors below):

rutilant \ROOT-l-uhnt\, adjective:

Glowing or glittering with ruddy or golden light.

He had a round head as bare as a knee, a corpse's button nose, and very white, very limp, very damp hands adorned with rutilant gems.
-- Vladimir Nabokov, Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

It was like the show-piece that is reserved for the conclusion of a fete, the huge bouquet of gold and crimson, as if Paris were burning like a forest of old oaks and soaring heavenward in a rutilant cloud of sparks and flame.
-- Émile Zola, The Downfall

Why flashed through space a sudden and extraordinary splendor, intenser than the rutilant fulgurations of the aurora borealis, lighting up the whole heavens instantaneously, and for a moment eclipsing every star of every magnitude?
-- Jules Verne, To The Sun?

Rutilant is from the Latin word rutilāns, meaning "having a reddish color or glow."

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