Aureole
noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A circle of light or halo around the head of a deity or a saint.
"The lady's hair no woman could possess without feeling it her pride. It was the daily theme of her lady's-maid,—a natural aureole to her head."
- 2 an indication of radiant light drawn around the head of a saint wordnet
- 3 Any luminous or colored ring that encircles something. broadly
"It was a lean Jewish face, with a great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small goatee beard […]"
- 4 the outermost region of the sun's atmosphere; visible as a white halo during a solar eclipse wordnet
- 5 A corona.
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- 6 A ring around an igneous intrusion.
"Cleavage and folds are imprinted are overprinted by the contact metamorphic aureole, indicating that they belong to a pre-intrustive episode of rock deformation and accompanying regional deformation."
- 7 Alternative form of aureola (“increment to blessedness”). alt-of, alternative
- 1 To surround with, or as if with, a halo. transitive
Example
More examples"The icon had a gold aureole on both Mary and Jesus."
Etymology
From Middle English aureole, from Old French aureole, from Medieval Latin aureola (corona) (“golden (crown)”). Doublet of oriole.
Related phrases
More for "aureole"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.