lamplight

English

Etymology

From Middle English lampe lyght, laumpe-lyth, lombe-lyȝt, equivalent to lamp +‎ light. Compare West Frisian lampeljocht (“lamplight”), Dutch lamplicht (“lamplight”), German Lampenlicht (“lamplight”), Danish lampelys (“lamplight”), Swedish lampljus (“lamplight”), Icelandic lampaljós (“lamplight”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈlæmplaɪt/

Noun

lamplight (countable and uncountable, plural lamplights)

1. The light emitted by a lamp.

   We sat around reading by lamplight all night.

   • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

     I turned my head, and as I lay gasping in the throes of that awful struggle I could see that Leo was off the rock now, for the lamplight fell full upon him.

   • 2013 August 3, “Yesterday’s fuel”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:

     The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania. […] It was used to make kerosene, the main fuel for artificial lighting after overfishing led to a shortage of whale blubber. Other liquids produced in the refining process, too unstable or smoky for lamplight, were burned or dumped.

Hypernyms

• light

Translations

the light emitted by a lamp

• Bulgarian: изкуствено осветление n (izkustveno osvetlenie)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 燈光／灯光 (zh) (dēngguāng)

• Finnish: lampunvalo
• Hungarian: lámpafény (hu), lámpavilág (hu)
• Irish: solas lampa m
• Russian: свет ла́мпы m (svet lámpy)