auroral

English

Etymology

aurora +‎ -al.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɔːˈɹɔəɹəl/, /ɔːˈɹɔːɹəl/
• IPA^(key): /ɔˈɹɔɹəl/, /əˈɹɔɹəl/
• Rhymes: -ɔːɹəl

Adjective

auroral (comparative more auroral, superlative most auroral)

1. Pertaining to the dawn; dawning, eastern, like a new beginning.

   Synonyms: aurorean, dawnlike, dilucular

   • 1684, Francis Bampfield, Miqra ̕qadōsh […] A Grammatical Opening of Some Hebrew Words and Phrases, London: John Lawrence, p. 36,^[1]

     This first created light is properly the auroral light.

   • 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, New York: Longmans, Green, Lectures 11, 12 and 13, pp. 266-7,^[2]

     This auroral openness and uplift gives to all creative ideal levels a bright and caroling quality, which is nowhere more marked than where the controlling emotion is religious.

   • 1928, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Orlando: A Biography, London: The Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished as Orlando: A Biography (eBook no. 0200331h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, July 2015:

     Sunsets were redder and more intense; dawns were whiter and more auroral.

   • 1958, Jean Stafford, “The Children’s Game” in The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969, pp. 25-26,^[3]

     Hugh kissed her and Abby felt as young and tremulous as a schoolgirl. But she was not demanding and she was not headlong and she counseled herself to look on this tenuous, auroral experience as one that would last only so long as she remained in England […]

2. Rosy in colour.

   Synonyms: blushing, roseate

   • 1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Student’s Tale” in Tales of a Wayside Inn, Boston: Ticknor and Fields, p. 38,^[4]

     Her cheeks suffused with an auroral blush,

3. Pertaining to the aurora borealis or aurora australis.
   • 1878, Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native, London: Smith, Elder, Volume 1, Chapter 10, p. 194,^[5]

     The creature brought within him an amplitude of Northern knowledge. Glacial catastrophes, snow-storm episodes, glittering auroral effects, Polaris in the zenith, Franklin underfoot,—the category of his commonplaces was wonderful.

References

• “auroral”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

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Spanish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /auɾoˈɾal/ [au̯.ɾoˈɾal]

Adjective

auroral m or f (masculine and feminine plural aurorales)

1. auroral

Related terms

• aurora

Further reading

• “auroral”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014