illumine
Americanverb (used with or without object)
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illumines,
present (3rd person singular)
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illumined,
past participle, past
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illumining
present participle
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
illuminesimple
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illuminessimple
-
have illuminedperfect
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has illuminedperfect
-
am illuminingprogressive
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are illuminingprogressive
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is illuminingprogressive
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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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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:
“She is the one of course that I am trying to get. … To mark her off, to describe, to illumine, to celebrate, to get rid of her.”
From Los Angeles Times ● May 14, 2024
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
It illumines the lives of several remarkable people who made the changes happen.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 27, 2022
This “Frankenstein” illumines the ultimate “outcast” and could also be interpreted as a metaphysical corollary to Sharon’s “Flute.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 19, 2019
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
A face was illumined eerily by a flashlight.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 19, 2018
His life was illumined by a series of extraordinary spiritual visions.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 27, 2017
In the greatest formal creations of dance theater, the whole box of stage space around the dancers becomes illumined by energy and charged by meter.
From New York Times ● May 3, 2015
I was still arguing with her when the taxi pulled up at the curb, long slants of rain illumined in the headlights and the tires throwing up low fans of water.
From "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt
Most writers were unable to see life whole, and unsatisfied with illumining only fragments of it.
From Time Magazine Archive
Four years after “Oceana” was published, and “the Rota Club” was still illumining the nation, the commonwealth returned to monarchy by a beck, and without a word!
From Amenities of Literature Consisting of Sketches and Characters of English Literature by Isaac Disraeli
Presently the sun rose above the eastern mountains, its first rays illumining distant high-up villages which are invisible later in the day.
From Dorothy and other Italian Stories by Constance Fenimore Woolson
The sun was hardly illumining the tops of the eastern mountains of the valley when I awoke invigorated, and led my horse out into the grass again.
From The Backwoodsman or, Life on the Indian Frontier by Various
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 Stanley J. Weyman
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.
