coruscation

Definition

A sudden display of brilliance; a flashing of light; a sparkle.

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin coruscātiōnem, coruscātiō (“glitter, flash”).

Example Sentences

• "[I]n the dusky galleries, duskier with unwashed heads, is a strange 'coruscation,'—of impromptu billhooks."
• "The one, as a brilliant coruscation playing in a summer sky, might enchant the fancy and ensure the suffrage of a moment; the other, as a lovely constellation, though less vivid, yet from its undeviating steadfastness never failed to leave upon the observer impressions more truly gratifying, solid, and lasting."
• "2001, Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, Alfred A. Knopf (2001), 6, All of these things—the rubbed amber, the magnets, the crystal radio, the clock dials with their tireless coruscations—gave me a sense of invisible rays and forces, a sense that beneath the familiar, visible world of colors and appearances there lay a dark, hidden world of mysterious laws and phenomena."

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