[f. SUN sb. + LIGHT sb.; cf. WFris. sinneljacht, MDu. sonnelicht, (Du. zonlicht), OHG. sunnalioht and sunnûn licht (MHG. sunnenlicht, G. sonnenlicht).]
1. The light of the sun.
c. 1205. Lay., 17863. Wel neh al swa brihte swa þe sunne-lihte.
c. 1375. Cursor M., 18819 (Fairf.). Angels ar briȝter þen sunne-liȝt.
1390. Gower, Conf., II. 220. His wif … Lay with the king the longe nyht, Til that it was hih Sonne lyht.
1535. Coverdale, 2 Sam. xii. 12. I wyl do this in the sight of all Israel, and by Sonne lighte.
1667. Milton, P. L., IX. 1087. Woods impenetrable To Starr or Sun-light.
1833. Tennyson, Lady of Shalott, III. iv. His broad clear brow in sunlight glow’d.
1860. Tyndall, Glac., I. v. 38. When we pass from open sunlight to a moderately illuminated room.
1893. Sir R. Ball, Story of Sun, 290. To carbon … belongs the distinction of being the main source whence sunlight is dispensed.
b. fig.: cf. SUNSHINE 2.
1577. trans. Bullinger’s Decades (1592), 532. Christ is … the verie sunne light of the preaching of the Gospell.
1863. Geo. Eliot, Romola, Introd. The faces of the little children, making another sunlight amid the shadows of age.
1864. Tennyson, Aylmer’s F., 421. In such a sunlight of prosperity.
1891. Farrar, Darkn. & Dawn, lxvi. The sleek priest … continued to live in the sunlight of Court favour.
2. (Properly with hyphen.) = SUN-BURNER.
1862–7. J. Wylde’s Circ. Sci., I. 34/1. The introduction of ‘sunlights’ … aids in promoting ventilation.
1874. Micklethwaite, Mod. Par. Churches, 192. Sunlights may be … used in somewhat low and ceiled buildings.
3. attrib. and Comb.
1862. A. K. H. Boyd, Graver Thoughts Country Parson, xi. 191–2. Is it not that we should … constantly pray for that Blessed Spirit who will breathe new life into every good resolution, and vivify into sunlight clearness every sound and true belief?
1896. Evan Keane, in Spectator, 7 March, 339.
| And living air, and sunlight-gold, | |
| And wood and meadow, pray with me. |
