[app. orig. pa. pple. of ALIGHT v.3 (under which see quot. dated 1175); but placed by form-assoc. in the same series with a-fire, a-blaze, a-sleep, a-live, i.e., on fire, in a blaze, etc., and so now used only predicatively, whereas it was formerly attrib. also.]
1. Lighted, kindled, in a flame; on fire. Also fig.
c. 1420. Pallad. on Husb., V. 208. A brason vessel … Alight atte nyght.
1675. T. Brooks, Gold. Key, Wks. 1867, V. 242. To see all the world on a-light fire about them.
1743. Bolingbroke, Rem. Hist. Eng., Pref. A Beacon to be kept continually alight.
1860. Hawthorne, Marble Faun (1879), I. xx. 202. To set alight the devotion of the worshippers.
1863. Sala, Capt. Dang., III. v. 156. She was alight, and ran about the scene, screaming piteously.
1876. Mrs. Whitney, Sights & Ins., iii. 18. The girls, of course, were all alight about it.
1878. Huxley, Physiogr., 82. The number of gas-burners, lamps, or candles alight.
1882. R. Stevenson, New Arab. N., II. 90. The whole pavilion … had gone alight like a box of matches.
2. Lighted up, illumined. Also fig.
1842. Mrs. Browning, Grk. Chr. Poets, 62. Some marbles are like new dropt snow, and some Alight with blackness.
1861. Thackeray, Four Georges, iii. (1862), 169. The chapel was scarcely alight.
1881. Shorthouse, J. Inglesant, II. i. 6. All alight with the morning sun.
