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/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈɔɹ.i.oʊl/
• Homophone: oriole

Noun

aureole (plural aureoles)

1. 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. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC:

     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:

     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 Voice of Age”, in The Man Against the Sky:

     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, chapter 4, in Small Island‎^[1], London: Review, page 69:

     Those white women whose superiority encircled them like an aureole, could quieten any raucous gathering by just placing a finger to a lip.

2. (by extension) Any luminous or colored ring that encircles something.
   • 1949, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four‎^[2], 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, chapter 6, in The Farthest Shore, Atheneum Books:

     The dust of the road and his long, wiry hair made aureoles of red about him in the westering light […]

3. (astronomy) A corona.
4. (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.

5. (theology) Alternative form of aureola (“increment to blessedness”)

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

1. plural of aureola

Latin

Adjective

aureole

1. vocative masculine singular of aureolus

Portuguese

Verb

aureole

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

Spanish

Verb

aureole

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