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/brˈɪljənt/ Listen

adjective

Brilliant adj.

Sparkling with luster; glittering; very bright; as, a brilliant star.

Distinguished by qualities which excite admiration; splendid; shining; as, brilliant talents. "Washington was more solicitous to avoid fatal mistakes than to perform brilliant exploits."

Exceedingly intelligent, or of distinguished accomplishment in a field; as, a brilliant chemist.

Synonyms: See Shining.

noun

Brilliant n.

A diamond or other gem of the finest cut, formed into faces and facets, so as to reflect and refract the light, by which it is rendered more brilliant. It has at the middle, or top, a principal face, called the table, which is surrounded by a number of sloping facets forming a bizet; below, it has a small face or collet, parallel to the table, connected with the girdle by a pavilion of elongated facets. It is thus distinguished from the rose diamond, which is entirely covered with facets on the surface, and is flat below. "This snuffbox on the hinge see brilliants shine."

(Print.) The smallest size of type used in England printing. Note: This line is printed in the type called Brilliant.

A kind of cotton goods, figured on the weaving.

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Etymology of 'Brilliant'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Brilliant" Quotes from Famous Books

... illustrate the importance of attending to the exact conditions of an hypothesis. He says that in those groups of "birds that need protection from enemies," "when the male is brightly coloured and the female sits exposed on the nest, she is always less brilliant and generally of quite sober and protective hues"; and his hypothesis is, that these sober hues have been acquired or preserved by Natural Selection, because it is important to the family that the sitting ...

— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... an uneasy sense of changed relations which that meeting with Jim had brought to Phoebe was not lessened when she entered the theatre with her father that evening, and even Mr. Hopkins seemed to share her feelings. The theatre was large, and brilliant in decoration, the seats were well filled with the same heterogeneous mingling she had seen in the dining-room at the Placer Hotel, but in the parquet were some fashionable costumes and cultivated faces. Mr. Hopkins was not altogether so sure that Jim had been "only gassing." ...

— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte

... before, he said, in December, 1750, there was a brilliant foreigner named Peloti among the officers of Major de la Touche, a young soldier who had been singled out by Dupleix, the French Governor of Pondicherry, as a military genius of the first order. ...

— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... a simple task for those to whom the curse of rum has never come close home, to condemn the methods of a woman, who, as a drunkard's wife and widow, drank to the dregs the bitter cup of woe. Mrs. Nation saw her brilliant and handsome young husband slowly transformed into a demon by rum. She saw him land in an early and dishonored grave. She saw her baby cursed by the father's sin. She saw her early hopes blighted, and poverty haunting her door. She saw a favorite sister grieving ...

— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... that had never been trimmed and repressed into thick velvet. The Hall had belonged to the Greens, and the history of it is full of ghost stories and awful tragedies. We entered a hall, and by the ancient oaken staircase reposed upon the carpet a fox, in a fine attitude, with erect head and brilliant eyes,—really a splendid specimen of a creature. I was surprised at the quiet manner in which he reposed, undisturbed by our entrance; but I was much more astonished to find it was a dead fox stuffed. I could scarcely believe it after I was told. Mr. ...

— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

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