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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Lambent

Lambent \Lam"bent\, a. [L. lambens, -enlis, p. pr. of lambere to lick; akin to lap. See Lap to drink by licking.]

  1. Playing on the surface; touching lightly; gliding over. ``A lambent flame.''
    --Dryden. ``A lambent style.''
    --Beaconsfield.

  2. Twinkling or gleaming; fickering. ``The lambent purity of the stars.''
    --W. Irving.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
lambent

1640s, from figurative use of Latin lambentem (nominative lambens), present participle of lambere "to lick," from PIE root *lab-, indicative of smacking lips or licking (cognates: Greek laptein "to sip, lick," Old English lapian "to lick, lap up, suck;" see lap (v.1)).

Wiktionary
lambent

a. 1 brush#Verb or flickering gently over a surface. 2 glow or luminous, but lacking heat. 3 Exhibiting lightness or brilliance of wit; clever or witty without unkindness.

WordNet
lambent

adj. softly bright or radiant; "a house aglow with lights"; "glowing embers"; "lambent tongues of flame"; "the lucent moon"; "a sky luminous with stars" [syn: aglow(p), glowing, lucent, luminous]

Usage examples of "lambent".

Jarrett, recalling Morel and his lights and the way the frug had gleamed like a magnificent artificial fur pelt with the single enormous lambent eye glowing from the center.

In the lambent glow of the flashlights it was impossible to get a good count, but to Hayward it seemed there must be hundreds: screaming with rage, brandishing angle irons and pieces of rebar.

Her lambent lavender gaze passed mildy over all of them, then she took the packet young Wanasi was thrusting at her, broke it open, and read what Ramanarrahnet had written.

One on her left was alive with drifting pyramids and rhombohedrons of oscillating, lambent energy, each a different color.

The boughs were all straining skyward, tipped with tongues of foul flame, and lambent tricklings of the same monstrous fire were creeping about the ridgepoles of the house, barn and sheds.

These are lustreless in ordinary use, but if touched by the vril wand they take a clear lambent flame, which illuminates, yet not burns.

Their abnormal, xanthic, lambent glow might have been some trick of the firelight.

The Grand Unctator of the Natural Rite will conduct the eulogy and guide his monic spire toward the Lambent Nescience.

Gentle lambent nerve impulses from the receptor cells now flowed along the strand to a more standard semiorganic processor that Renne carried in her jacket pocket.

They gleamed slightly, like lambent Avaric, against the dull, dark stone.

Finally the brown band descended from the mass of lambent colour overhead and curled into a tight bowknot before him.

I do not think I have ever seen a more beautiful group of cattle mostly heifers with a few young cows, and all of them fine-boned and graceful, with their lambent, kind eyes regarding us with mild interest as they took their places.

Another night-shattering fulmination sent a tongue of fire from sky to earth, and this one did, at last, lick the Ferris wheel, which lit up along every spoke and crossbeam, each cable a blazing filament, and for an instant it seemed that the huge machine was encrusted with jewels through which raced lambent reflections of flames.

The Changelings increased their pace with the additional light until the passageway widened into a bell-shaped chamber festooned with lambent strings of vegetation.

MOONLIGHT Even as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,-- So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace When the drear soul desires thee.