ILLUMINATION

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does illumination mean? 

• ILLUMINATION (noun)
  The noun ILLUMINATION has 5 senses:

1. a condition of spiritual awareness; divine illumination

2. the degree of visibility of your environment

3. an interpretation that removes obstacles to understanding

4. the luminous flux incident on a unit area

5. painting or drawing included in a book (especially in illuminated medieval manuscripts)

  Familiarity information: ILLUMINATION used as a noun is common.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ILLUMINATION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A condition of spiritual awareness; divine illumination

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

illumination; light

Context example:

follow God's light

Hypernyms ("illumination" is a kind of...):

condition; status (a state at a particular time)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The degree of visibility of your environment

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Hypernyms ("illumination" is a kind of...):

state (the way something is with respect to its main attributes)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "illumination"):

light; lighting (having abundant light or illumination)

dark; darkness (absence of light or illumination)

Derivation:

illuminate (make lighter or brighter)

Sense 3

Meaning:

An interpretation that removes obstacles to understanding

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

clarification; elucidation; illumination

Context example:

the professor's clarification helped her to understand the textbook

Hypernyms ("illumination" is a kind of...):

interpretation (an explanation that results from interpreting something)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "illumination"):

disambiguation (clarification that follows from the removal of ambiguity)

Derivation:

illuminate (make free from confusion or ambiguity; make clear)

Sense 4

Meaning:

The luminous flux incident on a unit area

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

illuminance; illumination

Hypernyms ("illumination" is a kind of...):

brightness; brightness level; light; luminance; luminosity; luminousness (the quality of being luminous; emitting or reflecting light)

Derivation:

illuminate (make lighter or brighter)

Sense 5

Meaning:

Painting or drawing included in a book (especially in illuminated medieval manuscripts)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

illumination; miniature

Hypernyms ("illumination" is a kind of...):

painting; picture (graphic art consisting of an artistic composition made by applying paints to a surface)

Domain category:

Dark Ages; Middle Ages (the period of history between classical antiquity and the Italian Renaissance)

Derivation:

illuminate (add embellishments and paintings to (medieval manuscripts))

 Context examples 

"Is Amy's illumination anywhere about? I took a fancy to buy that for Father," said Jo, very anxious to learn the fate of her sister's work.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

The team demonstrated some of these complex movements by constructing soft grippers that capture and release objects in response to light illumination.

(New Materials Developed by Scientists Able to Move in Response to Light, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

Issue associated with the failure of a device designed to respond to a physical stimulus (as temperature, illumination, motion) to transmit a resulting signal for interpretation or measurement.

(Failure to Sense Medical Device Problem, Food and Drug Administration)

Issue associated with the inaccuracy of a device designed to respond to an input (such as temperature, illumination, motion) to transmit a resulting signal that can not be used for interpretation or measurement.

(Invalid Sensing Medical Device Problem, Food and Drug Administration)

The color images for this observation, obtained in April 2015, are the first to show large northern areas of Tethys under the illumination and viewing conditions necessary to see the arcs clearly.

(Unusual Red Arcs Spotted on Icy Saturn Moon, NASA)

Mission scientists have discovered that the layers of haze in Pluto’s nitrogen atmosphere vary in brightness depending on illumination and viewpoint, yet the haze itself maintains its overall vertical structure.

(Pluto’s Haze Varies in Brightness, NASA)

Issue associated with device features that are designed to respond to a physical stimulus (temperature, illumination, motion, cardiac rhythms) that do not transmit a resulting signal for interpretation or measurement.

(Medical Device Sensing Issue, Food and Drug Administration)

Under stronger illumination, high pressure bubbles briefly form to push the droplets along a surface.

(Colour-changing artificial ‘chameleon skin’ powered by nanomachines, University of Cambridge)

He forgot, and lived again, and, living, he saw, in clear illumination, the beast he was making of himself—not by the drink, but by the work.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

It was Sunday, and the whole time between morning and afternoon service was required by the general in exercise abroad or eating cold meat at home; and great as was Catherine's curiosity, her courage was not equal to a wish of exploring them after dinner, either by the fading light of the sky between six and seven o'clock, or by the yet more partial though stronger illumination of a treacherous lamp.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)