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Incandescent first lit up the English language toward the end of the 18th century, at a time when scientific experiments involving heat and light were being conducted on an increasingly frequent basis. An object that glowed at a high temperature (such as a piece of coal) was incandescent. By the mid-1800s, the incandescent lamp—aka the lightbulb—had been invented; it contains a filament which gives off light when heated by an electric current. Incandescent is the modern offspring of a much older parent, the Latin verb candēre, meaning "to glow." Centuries earlier, the word for another source of light, candle, was also derived from candēre.
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Examples of incandescent in a Sentence
Serenity Mirabito, Rn, Health, 19 June 2024
The energy-efficient bulbs run cooler and last up to 25 times longer than incandescent lights.
—Stephen Underwood, Hartford Courant, 17 June 2024
science.org, 19 Sep. 2024
Rather than incandescent tungsten or wine and olive oil, however, these constantly morphing shapes carry sparkling pinpoints of light.
—Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times, 17 Sep. 2024
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“Incandescent.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/incandescent. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.
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incandescent
1 of 2 adjective
incandescent
2 of 2 noun
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