Dazzlement
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A burst or flash of light; a cause of dazzling. countable, uncountable
"It had been very hot all the trip, the hottest Nick had ever known; in Venice, for all its dazzlements, they had moved in a heatwave stink of decay […]"
- 2 The condition of being dazzled. countable, figuratively, sometimes, uncountable
"1965, Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization (1961), translated by Richard Howard, New York: Vintage, 1988, Chapter 4, Dazzlement is night in broad daylight, the darkness that rules at the very heart of what is excessive in light’s radiance. Dazzled reason opens its eyes upon the sun and sees nothing, that is, does not see; in dazzlement, the recession of objects toward the depths of night has as an immediate correlative the suppression of vision itself; at the moment when it sees objects disappear into the secret night of light, sight sees itself in the moment of its disappearance."
Example
More examples"It had been very hot all the trip, the hottest Nick had ever known; in Venice, for all its dazzlements, they had moved in a heatwave stink of decay […]"
Etymology
From dazzle + -ment.
More for "dazzlement"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.