rutilance means redness; a red glow; the quality of being rutilant. It carries an Arena rating of 1624, earned across 31 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, rutilance ranks #1,441 of 17,127 for Most Vivid Words, #1,813 of 17,130 for Most Beautiful Words, #4,038 of 17,140 for Most Whimsical Words, #5,024 of 17,126 for Most Satisfying to Say.
Why “rutilance” is a great word
RUTILANCE — [Noun] A red glow or reddish gleam; the quality of shining with a fiery, coppery, or golden-red light. Formed within English from the adjective 'rutilant' (from Latin rutilant-, rutilans, present participle of rutilare 'to glow red', from rutilus 'reddish, golden-red') and the noun-forming suffix '-ance'. Unlike "rubescence," which implies a transient, surface blush, or "incandescence," which denotes a white-hot glare from heat, rutilance is the cool, inherent fire of a material. It is the deep, smoldering flash of a garnet held to candlelight, the burnished copper of an autumn beech leaf, and the patient, subterranean glow of banked embers—a warmth remembered more than felt, a light that refuses to be extinguished.
noun
- redness; a red glow; the quality of being rutilante.g.“1918-22, James Joyce, Ulysses
[…] rolled it into a thin cylinder, ignited it in the candleflame, applied it when ignited to the apex of the cone till the latter reached the stage of rutilance […]”
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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