Why “coruscance” is a great word
A glittering, or the giving forth of intermittent flashes of light. From the Latin verb coruscare ('to vibrate, to glitter'). Unlike 'glitter,' which suggests a superficial or tawdry show, or 'luminescence,' which denotes a steady, cold emission, coruscance is a dynamic flash, a vibration made visible. It is the wild, metallic sparking from a struck flint, the shattered-mirror dance of sunlight on a wind-chopped sea, and the fierce, silent lightning behind a distant bank of clouds—light not as a steady state, but as a transient, brilliant disturbance in the fabric of the dark.