illustrious

adj
/ɪˈlʌs.tɹɪ.əs/UK/ɪˈlʌs.tɹi.əs/US

Etymology

From Latin illūstris (“bright, shining; distinguished, prominent, illustrious”) + -ous (suffix forming adjectives from nouns, to denote possession or presence of a quality in any degree). Illūstris is derived from illūstrō (“to brighten, illuminate; to make famous or illustrious”), from in- (“in, inside”) + lūstrō (“to purify by making a sacrifice; to brighten, illuminate”) (from lūstrō (“purificatory sacrifice”), possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *lewk- (“bright; to shine”) or *lewh₃- (“to wash”)).

  1. derived from *lewk-
  2. derived from illūstris

Definitions

  1. Admired, distinguished, respected, or well-known.

    • Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs!
    • The ant has made himself illustrious / Through constant industry industrious. / So what? / Would you be calm and placid / If you were full of formic acid?

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at illustrious. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01illustrious02admired03admire04reverence05profound06far07distant08royalty09royal

A definitional loop anchored at illustrious. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

9 hops · closes at illustrious

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA