Read another book in which the word "lambent" was used

[conuly]

At least this time it wasn't discussing eyes - the eyes in question were "limpid", no worries there - but light reflecting off of gold paint.

This is something that might actually be lambent in the real world, so I suppose there's no need for careful set-up there, unlike when it's inexplicably used to describe eyes, but I still think this weird fashion for "lambent" in fantasy is just the epitome of unnecessary purpleness.

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Comments

[brokenallbroken]

Usually when I see "lambent", it's in reference to something that should/would have a tapetum lucidum.

[conuly]

I still think it's not a good word to just throw out into your book. Despite the somewhat distressing uptick in "lambent" I've seen in fantasy lately, it's still a super low-frequency word.

[siderea]

The Original Uber Eats India’s Amazing Near Century and a Half Old Dabbawala

This has some interesting detail! I knew about the dabbawalas and their incredible accuracy; I didn't know about them being independent contractors and having basically their own guild/union to protect their considerable standard of living. That's very interesting.

[kengr]

I suspect that many writers using words like "lambent" don['t actually know what they mean, but they've seen them used if (somewhat) similar circumstances.

I really should start keeping a list of the passages where someone get confused like that.

[pauamma]

As I recall, in _The Eye of Argon_, someone's nose is opaque.

[conuly]

I should hope it is! Otherwise things are very odd.

[foms]

That nose is not only opaque. It is also lithe.

[pauamma]

Can't make me reread it to check. Nuh-uh.

[sallymn]

Oh yes, I would snigger at the number of people who use words they clearly misunderstand...

If it didn't bring to mind the lowering times I did it myself, and found out the real meaning later. Luckily not too many, but still makes me blush :(

[kareina]

I don't recall ever seeing/hearing lambent before today. (This doesn't mean I haven'--if the meaning were clear from context I may have skimmed right past it without really noticing.) Since I may not be the only person who doesn't recognize the word, and I have OED access through my uni account, and not everyone does, I will share it here:

lambent, adj.

Pronunciation: Brit. Hear pronunciation/ˈlambənt/, U.S. Hear pronunciation/ˈlæmbənt/
Frequency (in current use): (3 of 8 dots showing)
Etymology: < Latin lambent-em, present participle of lambĕre to lick.

1.

a. Of a flame (fire, light): Playing lightly upon or gliding over a surface without burning it, like a ‘tongue of fire’; shining with a soft clear light and without fierce heat.

1647 A. Cowley Answer Platonicks in Mistress As useless to despairing Lovers grown, As Lambent flames, to men i' th' Frigid Zone.

1656 A. Cowley Destinie in Pindaric Odes iv The Star that did my Being frame, Was but a Lambent Flame, And some small Light it did dispence, But neither Heat nor Influence.

1697 J. Dryden tr. Virgil Æneis vii, in tr. Virgil Wks. 403 Lambent Glories danc'd about her Head.

1781 T. Cavallo in Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) 71 330 Because its light..was stationary and not lambent.

1834 M. Somerville On Connexion Physical Sci. (1849) xxviii. 323 Those lambent, diffuse flashes of lightning without thunder, so frequent in warm summer evenings.

1854 W. M. Thackeray Newcomes I. xxix. 284 The lambent lights of the starry hosts of heaven.

1866 H. E. Roscoe Lessons Elem. Chem. ii. 11 Sulphur, which in the air burns with a pale lambent flame.


b. transferred and figurative.

1682 J. Dryden Mac Flecknoe 8 His Brows thick Fogs, instead of Glories-Grace, And Lambent Dulness plaid about his Face.

1748 S. Richardson Clarissa III. xxxiii. 176 My next point will be to make her acknowlege a lambent flame, a preference of me to all other men, at least.

1841–8 F. Myers Catholic Thoughts II. iv. xxxiii. 340 A mild and lambent light of Prophecy may be considered as encircling their [the Jews'] whole constitution.

1866 G. MacDonald Ann. Quiet Neighb. (1878) xii. 235 His intellect was rather a lambent flame than a genial warmth.

c. By extension, of eyes, the sky, etc.: Emitting, or suffused with, a soft clear light; softly radiant.

1717 A. Pope Eloisa to Abelard in Wks. 420 Those smiling eyes, attemp'ring ev'ry ray, Shone sweetly lambent with celestial day.

1807 J. Barlow Columbiad v. 181 A general jubilee, o'er earth and heaven, Leads the gay morn and lights the lambent even.

1867 L. M. Child Romance of Republic i. 3 Her large brown eyes were..lambent with interior light.

1873 W. Black Princess of Thule vi. 94 The strange lambent darkness..of those northern twilights.

1877 W. Black Green Pastures (1878) iv. 29 The great acacia spread its feathery branches into a cloudless and lambent sky.

1886 J. Ruskin Præterita II. v. 159 The Rhone flows like one lambent jewel.


d. figurative. Of wit, style, etc.: Playing lightly and brilliantly over its subjects; gracefully sportive.

1871 J. Morley J. de Maistre in Crit. Misc. (1878) i. 112 A humour now and then a little sardonic, but more often genial and lambent.

1878 O. W. Holmes John Lothrop Motley: Mem. viii. 61 Lambent phrases in stately 'Articles'.

1880 B. Disraeli Endymion III. ix. 82 The style so picturesque and lambent!


2. In etymological sense: Licking, that licks. †Also = lambitive adj. rare.

1706 Phillips's New World of Words (new ed.) Lambent, licking with the Tongue; as, Lambent Medicines, i.e. such as are taken by licking off from the end of a Stick of Licorish, &c.

1785 W. Cowper Task vi. 782 To dally with the crested worm..or to receive The lambent homage of his arrowy tongue.

1826 W. Kirby & W. Spence Introd. Entomol. (1828) IV. 492 The Hymenoptera generally lap their food with their tongue and may be called lambent insects

I find it interesting that the oldest example was for meaning 2., and had to do with licking, and the next oldest is for meaning 1.c., with a description of the quality of eyes shining.

[conuly]

Yeah, it's not often I come across a word in my fiction reading I've never encountered before, and this *particular* word is so pointless in the first few books I read it in that I've taken a strong dislike to it entirely.

As I said at the time, if you describe a character's eyes as "lambent" and do not first provide the definition, your readers think you're talking about sheep.

[lilysea]

As I said at the time, if you describe a character's eyes as "lambent" and do not first provide the definition, your readers think you're talking about sheep

My immediate association would be the Lambton Worm...

[oursin]

Huh? Has anyone over the past century or so NOT thought that Monet was registering the picturesque painterly possibilities of the London Pertickler in those paintings? Have they not read any Victlit with people floundering in the fog? (which they continued to do until the Great Smogs of the 1950s produced Clean Air Acts).

Take it away, Charley D!

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little 'prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.

[conuly]

The explanation I've always heard - which was rejected in this article - is "maybe vision problems".

Hmm ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

You haven't seen that effect with yellow eyes, or near-yellow ones? I've seen it with cats, owls, and goats. It can look surprisingly like light flaring off gold or brass. On cats and owls it looks pretty cool. Goats are creepy.

Re: Hmm ...

[conuly]

Whether I have or haven't, I dislike the gratuitous use of the word "lambent" so much that I object on general principle.