Word of the Day for Wednesday, March 7, 2012
rutilant \ROOT-l-uhnt\,
adjective:
Glowing or glittering with ruddy or golden light.
He had a round head as bare as a knee, a corpse's button nose, and very white, very limp, very damp hands adorned with rutilant gems.
-- Vladimir Nabokov, "Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle"
It was like the show-piece that is reserved for the conclusion of a fete, the huge bouquet of gold and crimson, as if Paris were burning like a forest of old oaks and soaring heavenward in a rutilant cloud of sparks and flame.
-- Émile Zola, "The Downfall"
Why flashed through space a sudden and extraordinary splendor, intenser than the rutilant fulgurations of the aurora borealis, lighting up the whole heavens instantaneously, and for a moment eclipsing every star of every magnitude?
-- Jules Verne, "To The Sun?"
Rutilant is from the Latin word rutilāns, meaning "having a reddish color or glow."
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