SEARCHLIGHT

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does searchlight mean? 

• SEARCHLIGHT (noun)
  The noun SEARCHLIGHT has 1 sense:

1. a light source with reflectors that projects a beam of light in a particular direction

  Familiarity information: SEARCHLIGHT used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SEARCHLIGHT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A light source with reflectors that projects a beam of light in a particular direction

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

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

light; light source (any device serving as a source of illumination)

Meronyms (parts of "searchlight"):

Fresnel lens (lens composed of a number of small lenses arranged to make a lightweight lens of large diameter and short focal length)

 Context examples 

“Lucky for me he doesn’t carry a searchlight,” Wolf Larsen said.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

It was all lighted up an' shining, an' it shun right into me an' lighted me up inside, like the sun or a searchlight.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

On the summit of the East Cliff the new searchlight was ready for experiment, but had not yet been tried.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

The rays of the searchlight were kept fixed on the harbour mouth across the East Pier, where the shock was expected, and men waited breathless.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Before long the searchlight discovered some distance away a schooner with all sails set, apparently the same vessel which had been noticed earlier in the evening.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

The men working the searchlight, after scouring the entrance of the harbour without seeing anything, then turned the light on the derelict and kept it there.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

The searchlight followed her, and a shudder ran through all who saw her, for lashed to the helm was a corpse, with drooping head, which swung horribly to and fro at each motion of the ship.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Making straight for the steep cliff, where the churchyard hangs over the laneway to the East Pier so steeply that some of the flat tombstones—thruff-steans or through-stones, as they call them in the Whitby vernacular—actually project over where the sustaining cliff has fallen away, it disappeared in the darkness, which seemed intensified just beyond the focus of the searchlight.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)