alight
1 Americanverb (used without object)
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to dismount from a horse, descend from a vehicle, etc.
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to settle or stay after descending.
The bird alighted on the tree.
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to encounter or notice something accidentally.
adverb
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provided with light; lighted up.
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on fire; burning.
verb
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(usually foll by from) to step out (of) or get down (from)
to alight from a taxi
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to come to rest; settle; land
a thrush alighted on the wall
adjective
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burning; on fire
-
illuminated; lit up
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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alightsimple
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alightssimple
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have alightedperfect
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have alitperfect
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has alightedperfect
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has alitperfect
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am alightingprogressive
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are alightingprogressive
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is alightingprogressive
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have been alightingperfect progressive
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has been alightingperfect progressive
Past
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alightedsimple
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alitsimple
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had alightedperfect
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had alitperfect
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was alightingprogressive
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were alightingprogressive
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had been alightingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of alight1
First recorded before 1000; Middle English alighten, Old English ālīhtan; equivalent to a- 3 + light 3 )
Origin of alight2
First recorded before 1000; originally past participle of alight “to light up,” Middle English alihten, Old English onlīhtan, equivalent to a- 1 + light 1 )
Explanation
The word alight has two distinct meanings: it can mean coming down or settling in a delicate manner, such as a bird perching, or it can be a rather poetic way to describe something that’s on fire (or “afire”). Just as the word alight has two distinct grammatical forms and meanings, it has two distinct beginnings in the Old English. That period’s word ālīhtan had an original meaning of dismounting, or lightening the load on the horse, and so is the ancestor of the verb we use today that means "to settle or perch." Meanwhile, the word onlīhtan (see the different spelling?) of that same time meant to be on fire, which became our adjectival use of the word.
Vocabulary lists containing alight
Fahrenheit 451
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Lord of the Flies
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Mythology
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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:
Witnesses said the fire may have been started by a power line that fell and set scrubland alight but there was no official confirmation.
From Barron's ● Jul. 10, 2026
The cathedral, set alight in the overnight attacks, was almost completely destroyed during World War II and rebuilt only in the 1990s.
From Barron's ● Jun. 16, 2026
A peroxide Bradford blond with round glasses and cheese-cutter hat, he set the art world alight in the 1960s, and packed out art galleries more than half a century later.
From BBC ● Jun. 12, 2026
The force said: "A container was allegedly set alight deliberately causing extensive damage to the container and its contents."
From BBC ● May 28, 2026
The Games, alight with Homer and cider, were open.
From "A Separate Peace" by John Knowles
Lindsay Hale’s husband, Kai, has been dead for only 12 weeks when she alights in a cold winter landscape that she no longer recognizes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026
McCartney’s musical time machine eventually alights on “Salesman Saint,” a reference to his father, Jim Mac, who died in 1976.
From Salon ● May 12, 2026
When the setting sun in the west alights the skyscraper windows in the city with a glow, we call out to each other when we’re home: “It’s glow time!”
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 1, 2023
He never alights on an answer, but the search has prompted some of his best music to date.
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2023
A yellow-shafted flicker chisels for an insect in a tree, and a kingfisher alights on an aspen bough.
From "On the Far Side of the Mountain" by Jean Craighead George
Here countless celebrities and industry titans alighted as they came, or returned, to L.A.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 1, 2025
Not surprisingly, by the time that the couple alighted at the Astrodome in 1974, they were headed for divorce proceedings.
From Salon ● Nov. 23, 2024
A poor fisherman in a Turkish village was retrieving his net from a lake when he found that a white stork had alighted on his boat.
From New York Times ● Apr. 1, 2024
However, five Chinese coast guard personnel, three of them armed with steel batons, followed by boat, alighted on the islet and ordered the fishermen to leave.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 23, 2024
On his way back he came to Ethiopia and alighted there.
From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton
Earlier this year, China’s social media was alit with videos of jobless university graduates visiting temples to seek the blessings of the gods.
From Reuters ● Sep. 30, 2023
Just as the animal was nearly out of sight, it flew back upriver, alit on the water, and floated back down—over and over again.
From Science Magazine ● Aug. 15, 2023
More than 75,000 spectators attended the Matildas’ quarterfinal victory and the Sydney Opera House was alit in the yellow and green team colors.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 8, 2023
But of all the miracle works performed by the McDonald Corporation, you have alit upon two of the finest.
From Fox News ● Sep. 3, 2020
Late at night when we walked home from the laundry, they should have been sleeping behind locked doors, not overflowing into the streets in front of the benevolent associations, all alit.
From "The Woman Warrior" by Maxine Hong Kingston
Appalled by the incomprehensible waste—Hiroshima was still weeks away—he searched for precedent in myth and antiquity, alighting at once on the North African city of Carthage.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 11, 2026
While the creations from independent L.A. brand Lucky Star Candle are technically burnable, I prefer to display them around my house like beautiful wax sculptures whose sole purpose is alighting aesthetic pleasure within me.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 4, 2025
Transport officials urged fans to travel by tram to St Peter's Square and Victoria but to avoid alighting at Deansgate.
From BBC ● Jun. 11, 2023
Instead of arriving overland, the symbolic flame alighting the 2024 Paris Games will take to the seas from its birthplace in Greece, arriving aboard a three-masted tall ship in the French port of Marseille.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 3, 2023
The gull kept flying backward and forward along the direct line to the bank, only alighting now and then to guide Bigwig toward some straggling doe whom he had spotted going the wrong way.
From "Watership Down: A Novel" by Richard Adams
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.
