aureole

See also: auréole, auréolé, and Aureole

English

Etymology

From Middle English aureole, from Old French aureole, from Medieval Latin aureola (corona) ("golden (crown)").

Pronunciation

(UK) IPA^(key): /ˈɔː.ɹiː.əʊl/
(US) IPA^(key): /ˈɔɹ.i.oʊl/
Homophone: oriole

Noun

aureole (plural aureoles)

A circle of light or halo around the head of a deity or a saint.
- 1859, George Meredith, chapter 16, in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. A History of Father and Son. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, OCLC 213819910:
  The lady's hair no woman could possess without feeling it her pride. It was the daily theme of her lady's-maid,—a natural aureole to her head.
- 1915, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, “chapter 122”, in Of Human Bondage, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, OCLC 890513588:
  They sat quietly, side by side, without speaking. Philip enjoyed having her near him. He was warmed by her radiant health. A glow of life seemed like an aureole to shine about her.
- 1916, Edwin Arlington Robinson, The Man Against the Sky, "The Voice of Age":
  She feels, with all our furniture,
  Room yet for something more secure
  Than our self-kindled aureoles
  To guide our poor forgotten souls […]
- 2004, Andrea Levy, Small Island, London: Review, Chapter Four, p. 69,
  Those white women whose superiority encircled them like an aureole, could quieten any raucous gathering by just placing a finger to a lip.
(by extension) Any luminous or colored ring that encircles something.
- 1949, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Part One, Chapter 1,
  It was a lean Jewish face, with a great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small goatee beard […]
- 1972, Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore, Atheneum Books, Chapter 6:
  The dust of the road and his long, wiry hair made aureoles of red about him in the westering light […]
(astronomy) A corona.
(geology) A ring around an igneous intrusion.
- 1990, Roger Mason, Petrology of the Metamorphic Rocks, Chapter 3: "Metamorphism associated with igneous intrusions":
  Cleavage and folds are imprinted are overprinted by the contact metamorphic aureole, indicating that they belong to a pre-intrustive episode of rock deformation and accompanying regional deformation.

Derived terms

aureolate
aureole hat
inaureole

Related terms

aureolin
oriole

Translations

circle of light or halo around the head of a deity

Catalan: aurèola (ca) f
Chinese:
Mandarin: 圓光／圆光 (zh) (yuánguāng)
Finnish: sädekehä (fi)
French: auréole (fr) f
German: Heiligenschein (de) m, Aureole (de) f
Japanese: 後光 (ja) (ごこう, gokō)
Korean: 후광 (ko) (hugwang)
Maori: wāhi pupango (zone around the nipple)
Polish: aureola (pl) f
Romanian: nimb (ro) n, aureolă (ro) f
Russian: орео́л (ru) m (oreól), нимб (ru) m (nimb)
Serbo-Croatian:
Cyrillic: ореол m, нимбус m
Roman: oreol (sh) m, nimbus (sh) m

References

“aureole”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
"aureole" in the Wordsmyth Dictionary-Thesaurus (Wordsmyth, 2002)
"aureole" in Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
“aureole”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (1989)
Random House Webster's Unabridged Electronic Dictionary (1987-1996)

Italian

Noun

aureole f

plural of aureola

Latin

Adjective

aureole

vocative masculine singular of aureolus

Portuguese

Verb

aureole

inflection of aureolar:
1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
2. third-person singular imperative

Spanish

Verb

aureole

inflection of aureolar:
1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
2. third-person singular imperative