Fluorescent

How to spell fluorescent

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce fluorescent

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fluorescent mean?

1. adjectiveEmitting visible light when exposed to radiation such as ultraviolet, or having a strikingly vivid, glowing colour.

Fluorescent in a sentence

• The office was lit by a row of harsh fluorescent tubes.

• She wore a fluorescent vest so cyclists could see her at night.

Where does fluorescent come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb fluere, meaning 'to flow', which gave its name to the mineral fluorspar (fluorite) because miners used it as a flux to help metals flow when smelting. In 1852 the British physicist George Gabriel Stokes coined 'fluorescence' to describe the eerie glow he observed in fluorspar when it was struck by ultraviolet light, deliberately echoing 'opalescence'. The adjective 'fluorescent' followed directly, meaning capable of emitting light while being illuminated by another source. The Latin suffix -escent, meaning 'beginning to be' or 'becoming', is the same ending found in words like 'luminescent' and 'effervescent'. The spelling trap lives right at the start: that unusual 'fluor' cluster with its 'uo' must be kept in the correct order, and the ending is -escent (with a c), not -essent.

How the word is built

• fluor- (from fluorspar, the mineral that glows, ultimately Latin fluere 'to flow')
• -escent (becoming, giving off light)