ignis fatuus
Americannoun
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Also called friar's lantern, will-o'-the-wisp. a flitting phosphorescent light seen at night, chiefly over marshy ground, and believed to be due to spontaneous combustion of gas from decomposed organic matter.
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something deluding or misleading.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of ignis fatuus
1555–65; < Medieval Latin: literally, foolish fire
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.
Silent and alone, she saw the signal-light of the steamer moving like an ignis fatuus along the empurpled bosom of the water—at length suddenly disappearing behind the battlements of the Fort.
From The Child Wife by Reid, Mayne
It flashed through his mind that he had wasted two months pursuing an ignis fatuus, only to have nothing but bitterness at the end, when it might have been ——!
From Six Prize Hawaiian Stories of the Kilohana Art League by Armstrong, W. N.
Love is not the offspring of an hour or a day, nor is it the ignis fatuus which plays about the brain, and disturbs the sleep of the youth and the maiden in their teens.
From Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. 9 by Various
Nor he, nor any of the brave Plantagenets ever came to Ireland, for they were pursuing an ignis fatuus in France, instead of attending to their own business at home.
From My Lords of Strogue, Vol. I (of III) A Chronicle of Ireland, from the Convention to the Union by Wingfield, Lewis
A few nights afterwards it was there again, and must clearly have been some kind of ignis fatuus.
From Wild Life in a Southern County by Jefferies, Richard
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.
