Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Irradiate   Listen
verb
Irradiate  v. t.  (past & past part. irradiated; pres. part. irradiating)  
1.
To throw rays of light upon; to illuminate; to brighten; to adorn with luster. "Thy smile irradiates yon blue fields."
2.
To enlighten intellectually; to illuminate; as, to irradiate the mind.
3.
To animate by heat or light.
4.
To radiate, shed, or diffuse. "A splendid façade,... irradiating hospitality."
5.
To expose to radiation of any kind, especially ionizing radiation; as, to sterilize food by irradiating it with gamma rays; one can cause mutations in bacteria by irradiating them with ultraviolet light.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Irradiate" Quotes from Famous Books



... dramatic history has been made the subject of story or poem, and naturally some legendary quality would after a time irradiate the incidents. Thus some writers affirm that General Washington gave the order for the first shot, and some say that it was Lafayette. The story is this. Before signing the order, General Washington turned ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow

... ourselves, 'How often do I use this possibility of communion with God, which might irradiate all my daily life?' I think we shall need little else, in the nature of evidence, that our piety and our religious experience are terribly stunted and dwarfed, in comparison with what they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... Surrounds me, from the chearful waies of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledg fair Presented with a Universal blanc Of Natures works to mee expung'd and ras'd, And wisdome at one entrance quite shut out. 50 So much the rather thou Celestial light Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight. Now had the Almighty Father from above, From the pure Empyrean where he sits High Thron'd above all highth, bent down his eye, His own works and their works at once ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... not long time remain bereft, In hopeless darkness left? Ye soon will see the eastern sky Grow white again, the dawn arise, Precursor of the sun, Who with the splendor of his rays Will all the scene irradiate, And with his floods of light The fields of heaven and earth will inundate. But mortal life, When lovely youth has gone, Is colored with no other light, And knows no other dawn. The rest is hopeless wretchedness and gloom; The journey's end, ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi

... moonshine; and another for the condensation of morning mist into square blocks of granite, wherewith it was proposed to rebuild the entire Hall of Fantasy. One man exhibited a sort of lens whereby he had succeeded in making sunshine out of a lady's smile; and it was his purpose wholly to irradiate the earth by means ...
— The Hall of Fantasy (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... know how Jones lights his house? I don't mean the parlor, where you and Mrs. Asmodeus display the family jewels on grand occasions, and where Mrs. Jones exhibits the splendor of her beauty and the radiance of her smiles. That is gas,—bright, beaming, brilliant gas. What else should irradiate the loving tenderness which unites Mr. and Mrs. Jones on such occasions? You don't suppose that Jones is goose enough to show his decayed home-grown fruit to you, when he invites you to sup with him in that frescoed dining-room? He picks out the rosy-cheeks for your ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... husband dying,—dying fast, She saw a stranger slowly glide Beneath the boughs that shrunk aghast. Upon his head he wore a crown That shimmered in the doubtful light; His vestment scarlet reached low down, His waist, a golden girdle dight. His skin was dark as bronze; his face Irradiate, and yet severe; His eyes had much of love and grace, But glowed so bright, ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt

... the imagination in her intercourse with Nature. To her sufficient for the day is the good thereof; and on each new glorious sight being shown to her eyes, she employs her God-given power to magnify or irradiate what she beholds, without diminishing or obscuring what she remembers. Thus, to her all things in nature hold their own due place, and retain for ever their own due impressions, aggrandised and beautified by mutual ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... a good mother? Is she not a gift out of heaven, sacred and delicate, with affections so great that no measuring line short of that of the infinite God can tell their bound; fashioned to refine and soothe and lift and irradiate home and society and the world; of such value that no one can appreciate it, unless his mother lived long enough to let him understand it, or unless, in some great crisis of life, when all else failed him, he had a wife to reenforce ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden

... "wandering" eyelids, as her gaze roved over the meadows and across the tall grasses to the sea. A part of her youth was being, indeed, vividly brought back to her; the sight of this marine landscape recalled many memories; and with the recollection her whole face and figure seemed to irradiate something of the inward ardor that consumed her. She had passed this very road, through this same country before, long ago, in her youth, with her children. She half smiled at the remembrance of a description given ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... Surrounds me—from the cheerful ways of men Cut off; and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal blank Of nature's works, to me expunged and razed And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. So much the rather, Thou, Celestial Light, Shine inwards, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate—there plant eyes; all mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things invisible ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... real Seraph met his gaze— There was no doubt of that— Irradiate with celestial rays. Our merchant viewed him with amaze, And then he touched ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... The Master stood above him, smiling down; and while the Master's stature seemed to have taken some additional inches, his smile seemed to irradiate the room. ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... charities, and patient, worthy counsels, how deep and pure and inexhaustible were the fountains of his virtues. And loving hearts delight to recall, as loving lips will ever delight to tell, the thousand little things he did which sent forth lines of light to irradiate the gloom of the conquered land and to lift up the hopes and cheer the works of ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... next was struck to the heart to find the child he had lost, many years before, building him a tower in heaven. Our blessed Christian hopes do not shut out the belief of love and remembrance still enduring there, but irradiate it and make it sacred. Who should know that better than you, or who more deeply feel the touching truths and comfort of that story in the older book, where, when the bereaved mother is asked, "Is it well with the child?" ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... two patients that the thermometer did not work, there would have been two funerals in short order. Their temperature I swear was 105 degrees. I solemnly made one and then the other smoke the thermometer, allowed an expression of satisfaction to irradiate my countenance, and joyfully told them that their temperature was 94 degrees. Then I slammed more quinine down their throats, told them that any sickness or weakness they might experience would be due to the quinine, and left them to get well. ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... and blasted, clenched with grasping roots The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here, Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away, The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin And white, and where irradiate dewy eyes 535 Had shone, gleam stony orbs:—so from his steps Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds And musical motions. Calm, he still pursued The stream, that with a larger volume now 540 Rolled through the labyrinthine ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... space that was at once cool and fragrant. As they went, he considered her admiringly, and marvelled at himself that it should have taken him so long fully to realize her slim, unusual grace, and to find her, as he now did, so entirely desirable, a woman whose charm must irradiate all the life of a man, and touch its ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... in this height of despair that thoughts of the infinite grace and love of Christ, which she says she had hitherto repelled, began to irradiate her soul. A sermon on His ability to save "unto the uttermost" deeply affected her. [2] "While listening to it my weary spirit rested itself, and I thought, 'surely it can not be wrong to think of the Saviour, although He is not mine.' With this conclusion I gave myself ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... I am here when the leaves are all fallen, the programme of my life will have changed, and this story of the dead past will be illuminated by the light of a living present which will irradiate all its saddening features. Who would not pray that my last gleam of light and hope may be that of dawn and not ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... without tendency to flirtation. Take her in another way, confront her with a young and marriageable man, and Elmore greatly feared that she unconsciously set all her beauty and grace at work to charm him; another life seemed to inform her, and irradiate from her, apart from which she existed simple and childlike still. In the security of his own deposited affections, it appeared to him cruelly absurd that a passion which any other pretty girl might, and some other pretty girl in time must, ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells

... the adjoining room and presently the door opens. The furniture is dark and antique, brightened by a few rugs and one glowing picture of sunset that seems to irradiate the whole apartment. The occupant of the bed appears almost in a sitting position, propped up by pillows, marble pale, and thin to attenuation. One wasted hand lies over the spread, handsome enough for a woman, and not showing the thinness as much as the face. The eyes are ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... incomparably greater light," to use the words of the most venerable text in the Indian Scripture, "which illumines all, delights all, from which all proceed, to which all must return, and which alone can irradiate our intellects." He ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... gave ardour to my search, but no clew. I lost him, left him behind, and never found him again. He fell into the Garden of Priapus, I doubt. As for me, I believed that I was now looking upon a Dryad. I was looking certainly at a spirit informed. A being, irradiate and quivering with life and joy of life, stood dipt to the breast in the brake; stood so, bathing in the light; stood so, preening herself like a pigeon on the roof-edge, and saw me and took ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... a look at Ellen which seemed to express pleasure at the request, if pleasure it might be called that could irradiate such an aspect. She put out her hand for the customary largess ere setting forward as their guide on the expedition. Some difficulty now arose by reason of the straitness of the path; but their dumb leader hastened up the lane ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... Samuel. Of course he, very appropriately, often turned to the juvenile part of his congregation; and as I was seated in the front row, I felt as if I were alone in the church—as if every word were individually addressed to myself; his imploring yet impassioned glances seemed to irradiate my breast with a sweet glory. I felt at once, that since the goodness of the Creator was inexhaustible, the fault must rest with man if there were no more Samuels, so I determined to be one—to devote myself entirely to divine abstraction, to heavenly glory, and ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... don't despise my grave airs, although (with a view no doubt to irradiate my mind in my misfortunes) you rally me upon them. Every body has not your talent of introducing serious and important lessons, in such a happy manner as at once to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... happiness. The manners of its inhabitants were primeval and simple, and if their enjoyments were few and limited, so also were their desires. God gave them the summer breeze to purify their blood, the sun of heaven to irradiate the bleakness of their mountains, the morning and evening dressed in all their beauty, and music of their mountain streams, and that of the feathered songsters, to enliven their souls with its ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... Not more surely does the empress of night illuminate and beautify the whole canopy of heaven, than does woman, if educated aright, irradiate, and give its fairest tints to, her own fireside. To leave her uncultivated, a victim to ignorance, prejudice, and the vices they entail, is to take home to our own bosoms a brood that will inflict pangs sharper than death. For the love and honor of our homes, let us encourage the most liberal ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... distant hum is lull'd to rest, Athwart the sunset dark'ning clouds advance. And shut from sight the rosy west; A dreamy orison enshrines my heart. Deep shelter'd in the sacred haunts of home, Where elfin sprites among the eeries dart, Irradiate in the gloam. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... wall, as he turned away from the Pierce car. A little apart from the human current she stood, still and expectant. As if to point her out as the chosen of gods and men, the questing sun, bursting in triumph through a cloud-rift, sent a long shaft of gold to encompass and irradiate her. To the end, whether with aching heart or glad, Hal was to see her thus, in flashing, recurrent visions; a slight, poised figure, all gracious curves and tender consonances, with a cluster of the trailing arbutus, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... engendered by his incommunicable contemplations, and that vapor —as you will sometimes see it —glorified by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon his thoughts. For, d'ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear air; they only irradiate vapor. And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... on which I gaz'd with pride, Which I could scarcely lay aside, Even to close my eyes for rest; (I wear it now upon my breast, And there till death it shall remain!) Was this same golden heart and chain! The peacock crown, with all its eyes, Its emerald, jacinth, sapphire dyes, When first, irradiate o'er my brow, Wav'd its rich plumes in gleaming flow, Did not so deep a thrill impart, So soften, so dilate my heart! No praise had touch'd me, as it fell, Like his, because I saw full well, Honour and sweetness orb'd did lie Within the circlet of his eye! Integrity which ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... my soul, and with the sun," . . . And paused upon the bridge, his eyes due east, Where was emerging like a full-robed priest The irradiate globe that vouched the ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... declaimed, with the learning of an astronomer, the simplicity of an apostle, the eloquence of a prophet. He illustrated the moral and religious improvement of the sciences; the views of his students were enlarged; the sciences became brilliant stars to irradiate the hemisphere of Christianity. The perfect agreement between sound learning and true religion was a favorite theme of his heart. This remark is confirmed by his conversation, his letters, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... their ignorance; make those to become proficients in political, who will never arrive at theoretic virtue; and, in short, like the illuminations of deity, wherever there is any portion of aptitude in their recipients, they purify, irradiate, and exalt. ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor

... measures, and can think of nothing but my triumph, I will resume her violent letter, in order to strengthen my resolutions against her. I was before in too gloomy a way to proceed with it. But now the subject is all alive to me, and my gayer fancy, like the sunbeams, will irradiate it, and turn the solemn ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... through Isabella's character-at moments had truly believed that he might by assiduity, perhaps, if favored by fortune, win her love, and, may be, her hand in marriage. At any rate, with his light and buoyant heart, there was sunshine and hope enough in the future to irradiate his soul with joy, until the last scene in his drama of life, added to that of her ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray

... scintillate, coruscate, flash, blaze; be bright &c. adj.; reflect light, daze, dazzle, bedazzle, radiate, shoot out beams; fulgurate. clear up, brighten. lighten, enlighten; levin[obs3]; light, light up; irradiate, shine upon; give out a light, hang out a light; cast light upon, cast light in, throw light upon, throw light in, shed light upon, shed luster upon; illume[obs3], illumine, illuminate; relume[obs3], strike a light; kindle &c. (set fire ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... renown save that of the incomparable Henry Irving. The retirement of Archibald Florance from the stage a couple of years earlier had caused crimson gleams of sunset splendour to shoot across the Atlantic and irradiate even the Garrick Club, London, so that the members thereof had to shade their offended eyes. Edward Henry had never seen Archibald Florance, but it was not necessary to have seen him in order to appreciate the majesty of his glory. No male in the history of the world was ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... his public and private character, and in the homage of universal veneration and esteem. Where will you find one like him? Was there not great and peculiar goodness in God's bestowing him upon you? Was he not the joy and pride of your hearts continually? Did not his presence irradiate his home, and make it like an earthly Paradise? Every pang which you may suffer attests the value of the blessing which you have so long had. Your gratitude to God, the author of every good and perfect gift, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... the snow surface sparkles with its myriad stars of crystals. In the shadow it ceases to glitter, and assumes a blueness scarcely less blue than the sky. So the journey is like sailing through alternate tracts of light irradiate heavens, and interstellar spaces of the clearest and most flawless ether. The air is like the keen air of the highest glaciers. As we go, the bells keep up a drowsy tinkling at the horse's head. The whole landscape is transfigured—lifted ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... breathe anew; Though, like the bard himself, in night they lay, Immortal Garrick call'd them back to day: And till Eternity with power sublime Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary Time, Shakespeare and Garrick like twin-stars shall shine, And earth irradiate with a ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... all ordinary occasions, who will yet betray themselves in a crisis of importance. George Sheldon would fain have kept his project hidden from his elder brother; but in this one unguarded moment he forgot himself, and allowed the sense of triumph to irradiate ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... large estate Of work and interchange of communings — The little human paths to heavenly things Were also ours: the casual, intimate Vistas, which consecrate — With laughter and quick tears — the dusty noon Of days, and by moist beams irradiate Our plodding minds with courage, and attune The fellowship that bites its thumb ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... Souls, and by those ravishing Joys and inward Satisfactions, which are perpetually springing up, and diffusing themselves among all the Thoughts of good Men. He is lodged in our very Essence, and is as a Soul within the Soul, to irradiate its Understanding, rectifie its Will, purifie its Passions, and enliven all the Powers of Man. How happy therefore is an intellectual Being, who, by Prayer and Meditation, by Virtue and good Works, opens this Communication between God and his own Soul! ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... the vain-glorious misgivings that will now and then enter into the brain of the author—that irradiate, as with celestial light, his solitary chamber, cheering his weary spirits, and animating him to persevere in his labors. And I have freely given utterance to these rhapsodies whenever they have occurred; not, I trust, from an unusual spirit of egotism, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... first morning in the dormitory. The troubling odour of the long corridors of Clongowes came back to him and he heard the discreet murmur of the burning gasflames. At once from every part of his being unrest began to irradiate. A feverish quickening of his pulses followed, and a din of meaningless words drove his reasoned thoughts hither and thither confusedly. His lungs dilated and sank as if he were inhaling a warm moist unsustaining air and he smelt again the moist ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... pride of Miriam was intelligibly marked upon her smitten countenance; and the sin of transgressors will be written by the finger of God in appropriate and conspicuous characters upon their immortal destinies. Thus will the perfections of the Deity for ever blaze in the flames of perdition, and irradiate the temple of glory! ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... one. It had shone out after her search for her daughter's face; for the finding of it and for him it had continued to shine. It was like sunlight on a sad white day of mist; it did not dispel mournfulness, it seemed only to irradiate it. But—to have smiled at all. With Imogen's eyes he saw, suddenly, that tears would have been the more appropriate greeting and, in looking back at the girl once more, he saw that her own, as if in vicarious atonement, were running down her cheeks. She, then, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick



Words linked to "Irradiate" :   lighten up, process, lighten, treat, bombard, ray, prophesy, irradiation



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com