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phosphorescent

adj

Etymology

From phosphorus + -escent. It's interesting to note that phosphorus is not phosphorescent. Some phosphoric mixtures can be luminescent through chemical reactions, but none exhibit literal phosphorescence.

  1. derived from φωσφόρος — “the bearer of light”
  2. borrowed from phōsphorus
  3. formed as phosphorescent — “phosphorus + -escent”

Definitions

  1. Having the property of emitting light for a period of time after the source of excitation…

    Having the property of emitting light for a period of time after the source of excitation is taken away, e.g., in electrostatic storage tubes and cathode-ray tubes.

    • So he imports this special breed of scorpions and feeds them on metal meal and the scorpions turned a phosphorescent blue color and sort of hummed.

  2. A phosphorescent substance.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for phosphorescent. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

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