Dictionary

sea-light en · NOUN

Etymology

From sea + light.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) Light from the sea, either due to reflection off the waves or from bioluminescence.
   • It is she, they say, who is waving festival lanterns down there, making such beautiful sea-lights. 2014, Alexander Cordell, The Dreams of Fair Women, →ISBN:
   • A damp mist filled the room and the musty-coloured books that lined the walls were bathed in eerie sea-light. 2012, Jenny Nimmo, Charlie Bone and the Wilderness Wolf, →ISBN:
   • There it is: an octagonal shaped white house with a thatched roof, my bedroom with the grey sea-light streaming through slanted windows. 2013, Jan Campbell, Freudian Passions: Psychoanalysis, Form and Literature, →ISBN:
2. (countable, uncountable) A light on the seacoast to warn or guide boats.
   • For the good of man, his father and grandfather planted the high sea-lights upon the Inchcape and the Tyree Coast. 1999, Elbert Hubbard, Elbert Hubbard's Scrap Book, →ISBN:
   • On it's trial as a sea-light at Havre the result was unsatisfactory, as the compromise of merging two different curves in the design halved the concentration of light obtainable from a complete parabolic reflector without gaining sufficient compensation from the wider spread of weak light from the elliptic portion. 2013, D. Alan Stevenson, The World's Lighthouses: From Ancient Times to 1820, →ISBN, page 1809:
   • The elevation of the lantern above the sea should not, if possible, for sea-lights, exceed 200 feet ; and about 150 feet is sufficient, under almost any circumstances, to give the range which is required. 1848, William Laxton, The Civil Engineer and Architect's Journal - Volume 11, page 208:

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