dazzlement

English

Etymology

dazzle +‎ -ment

Noun

dazzlement (countable and uncountable, plural dazzlements)

1. A burst or flash of light; a cause of dazzling.
   • 2004, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 11, in The Line of Beauty […], 1st US edition, New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN:

     It had been very hot all the trip, the hottest Nick had ever known; in Venice, for all its dazzlements, they had moved in a heatwave stink of decay […]

2. (sometimes figuratively) The condition of being dazzled.
   • 1965, Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization (1961), translated by Richard Howard, New York: Vintage, 1988, Chapter 4,

     Dazzlement is night in broad daylight, the darkness that rules at the very heart of what is excessive in light’s radiance. Dazzled reason opens its eyes upon the sun and sees nothing, that is, does not see; in dazzlement, the recession of objects toward the depths of night has as an immediate correlative the suppression of vision itself; at the moment when it sees objects disappear into the secret night of light, sight sees itself in the moment of its disappearance.