coruscation

plural coruscations · alternative dated corruscation

1. countableuncountableA sudden display of brilliance; a flashing of light; a sparkle.

   [I]n the dusky galleries, duskier with unwashed heads, is a strange 'coruscation,'—of impromptu billhooks.

   1837, Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, (please specify the book or page number)

   2 more examples

   The one, as a brilliant coruscation playing in a summer sky, might enchant the fancy and ensure the suffrage of a moment; the other, as a lovely constellation, though less vivid, yet from its undeviating steadfastness never failed to leave upon the observer impressions more truly gratifying, solid, and lasting.

   1838, [Letitia Elizabeth] Landon (indicated as editor), chapter VII, in Duty and Inclination: […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 85

   2001, Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, Alfred A. Knopf (2001), 6, All of these things—the rubbed amber, the magnets, the crystal radio, the clock dials with their tireless coruscations—gave me a sense of invisible rays and forces, a sense that beneath the familiar, visible world of colors and appearances there lay a dark, hidden world of mysterious laws and phenomena.