Incandescent has literal and figurative meanings. Its literal meanings relate to heat and light; it describes something that is white or glowing because of great heat, and also something (like a light bulb) that produces bright light when heated. In figurative use, incandescent relates to several kinds of brilliance. Something or someone described as incandescent can be very impressive, successful, or intelligent, or simply happy and lively. In British English, incandescent can also describe someone or something feeling or showing great anger.

// The invention of the incandescent bulb in the 19th century ushered in the age of electric lighting.

// However much we were inclined to dislike her, it was hard not to be charmed by her incandescent smile and wit.

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“Chang was 31 years old in 1998 when she debuted with Hunger. The reviews were raves, the praise, incandescent. The New York Times profiled her two years after publication as if to observe just how extraordinary the collection and the reviews had been. The critics said often that Chang was writing about lost homelands but you will see that these are stories mostly about the new homeland, not lost at all. These are mostly stories about America, about people who gave up everything to move here only to learn they would need to give up even more.” — Alexander Chee, foreword to Hunger (25th Anniversary Edition) by Lan Samantha Chang, 2023

Incandescent first came to light in the English language toward the end of the 1700s, at a time when scientific experiments involving heat and light were being conducted on an increasingly frequent basis. An object that glowed at a high temperature (such as a piece of coal) was deemed incandescent. By the mid-1800s, the incandescent lamp—aka the lightbulb—had been invented; it contains a filament which gives off light when heated by an electric current. Figurative uses of incandescent soon followed, and today someone with a brilliant way with words may be said to have an “incandescent wit,” while someone positively beaming with joy may possess an “incandescent smile.”