auroral

comparative more auroral · superlative most auroral

1. Pertaining to the dawn; dawning, eastern, like a new beginning.

   This first created light is properly the auroral light.

   1684, Francis Bampfield, Miqra ̕qadōsh […] A Grammatical Opening of Some Hebrew Words and Phrases, London: John Lawrence, page 36

   3 more examples

   This auroral openness and uplift gives to all creative ideal levels a bright and caroling quality, which is nowhere more marked than where the controlling emotion is religious.

   1902, William James, “Lectures 11, 12 and 13”, in The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature […] , New York, N.Y.; London: Longmans, Green, and Co. […], →OCLC, pages 266–267

   Sunsets were redder and more intense; dawns were whiter and more auroral.

   1928, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Orlando: A Biography, London: The Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished as Orlando: A Biography (eBook no. 0200331h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, July 2015

   Hugh kissed her and Abby felt as young and tremulous as a schoolgirl. But she was not demanding and she was not headlong and she counseled herself to look on this tenuous, auroral experience as one that would last only so long as she remained in England […]

   1958, Jean Stafford, “The Children’s Game”, in The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, published 1969, pages 25–26

   Synonyms: aurorean, dawnlike, dilucular, eoan

2. Rosy in colour.

   Her cheeks suffused with an auroral blush,

   1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Student’s Tale”, in Tales of a Wayside Inn, Boston: Ticknor and Fields, page 38

   Synonyms: blushing, roseate

3. Pertaining to the aurora borealis or aurora australis.

   The creature brought within him an amplitude of Northern knowledge. Glacial catastrophes, snow-storm episodes, glittering auroral effects, Polaris in the zenith, Franklin underfoot,—the category of his commonplaces was wonderful.

   1878, Thomas Hardy, chapter 10, in The Return of the Native, volume 1, London: Smith, Elder, page 194