Phosphorescent
adj, noun
adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A phosphorescent substance.
Adjective
- 1 Having the property of emitting light for a period of time after the source of excitation is taken away, e.g., in electrostatic storage tubes and cathode-ray tubes.
"So he imports this special breed of scorpions and feeds them on metal meal and the scorpions turned a phosphorescent blue color and sort of hummed."
Adjective
- 1 emitting light without appreciable heat as by slow oxidation of phosphorous wordnet
Example
More examples"The physicists had shown that the alpha particles falling on a screen of phosphorescent zinc sulphide produced a number of scintillations."
Etymology
From phosphorus + -escent. It's interesting to note that phosphorus is not phosphorescent. Some phosphoric mixtures can be luminescent through chemical reactions, but none exhibit literal phosphorescence.