illumine
Americanverb (used with or without object)
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
illuminesimple
-
illuminessimple
-
have illuminedperfect
-
has illuminedperfect
-
am illuminingprogressive
-
are illuminingprogressive
-
is illuminingprogressive
-
have been illuminingperfect progressive
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has been illuminingperfect progressive
Past
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illuminedsimple
-
had illuminedperfect
-
was illuminingprogressive
-
were illuminingprogressive
-
had been illuminingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of illumine
1300–50; Middle English illuminen < Latin illūmināre to light up, equivalent to il- il- 1 + lūmin- (stem of lūmen ) light + -ā- thematic vowel + -re infinitive suffix
Explanation
To illumine is to shine a light on something, literally or figuratively. Your desk lamp might illumine the page of your book, while the words you're reading illumine your mind. This literary term is a more poetic way of saying "illuminate," though its original meaning was the figurative "enlighten spiritually." It's a graceful verb to use when you're talking about light that shines or glows: "The dancing candlelight cheerfully illumines the dim room." It's also useful for describing ideas that spark an intellectual or spiritual understanding: "It's the first time I've read philosophy that truly illumines my perception."
Vocabulary lists containing illumine
Selection Vocabulary 4, Unit 4
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Selection Vocabulary 5, Unit 3
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Part 2 Vocabulary (Unit 3)
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The non-narrative videos, which may well come to be regarded as the Sistine Chapel of video art, projected onto epic screens above the orchestra and singers, serve not to illumine Wagner’s drama but his intent.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 14, 2022
Those “if”s, those two counterfactuals, help illumine the precise borders of the crime.
From The New Yorker ● Apr. 17, 2019
Adjectives are where the elves of language both cheat and illumine reality.
From Slate ● Aug. 6, 2014
One 1721 image here shows a providential eye peering through the clouds of a storm, beams of light streaming downward to illumine an embattled ship.
From New York Times ● Aug. 18, 2010
A sun that was to illumine a world to come.
From "Johnny Tremain" by Esther Hoskins Forbes
The lighting illumines each river in brilliantly bright backdrop colors.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 14, 2025
It illumines the lives of several remarkable people who made the changes happen.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 27, 2022
In the case of Arp, a revolutionary figure in modernism’s movements of abstraction, Dadaism and Surrealism, this complementary group show illumines just how foundational and remarkably inimitable Arp’s abstractions really are.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 30, 2018
Foa’s comment illumines a vast gray area in the trigger warning debate.
From Slate ● Sep. 5, 2016
How can I make you see it, this strange harsh light which pervades Homer’s landscapes and illumines the dialogues of Plato, an alien light, inarticulable in our common tongue?
From "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt
The fog of war obscures even the most illumined conscience.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 14, 2023
There are pauses for out-of-body musing throughout, but the short third part, “Invisible Light,” is where Alexandra’s illumined soul and the weary soles of her feet become one.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 12, 2019
His life was illumined by a series of extraordinary spiritual visions.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 27, 2017
Inside is a girl whose “beauty illumined all that was around her.”
From Washington Post ● Apr. 1, 2015
And I myself preferred not to see him in strong sunshine, for his pale, membranic skin was no barrier to the light, which pierced deep into the flesh and illumined it to a hideous translucency.
From "Nectar in a Sieve" by Kamala Markandaya
Most writers were unable to see life whole, and unsatisfied with illumining only fragments of it.
From Time Magazine Archive
She looked wondrously beautiful in the darkened chapel, when a ray of lightning, illumining her fine features, seemed to trace her figure in dazzling outlines in the twilight.
From Withered Leaves. Vol. I. (of III) A Novel by Gottschall, Rudolf von
As we sat chatting that evening round the tea-table, to us entered Hamed, bearing, with honest pride illumining his brown features, a great tray of richly engraved brass, heaped up with curious but tempting-looking cakes.
From The Library Magazine of Select Foreign Literature All volumes by Various
Perhaps willingness to show that spiritualism has been an illumining force to us, and may be so to others, has place among our motives.
From Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism by Putnam, Allen
So he stood during perhaps a second, a small lamp upon the tray before him illumining his handsome figure; then his eyes, glancing up, met the reflection of mine in the mirror.
From Laid up in Lavender by Weyman, Stanley J.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
