starlight

«starlight» in Mova's school dictionary: the light that comes from the stars — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 2 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (starlight, uncountable)

meaning for a pupil

1) Starlight is the light that comes from the stars. tree →

2) It is the faint light you see on a clear night when there is no moon. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science lessons about space, starlight travels huge distances; the light we see from a star left it long ago, so we see the star as it was. In stories and poems, starlight makes a scene magical and quiet. Phrases: «by starlight», «twinkling starlight».

examples

• We walked home by starlight. tree →
• Starlight shone on the frozen lake. tree →
• Starlight from far stars takes a very long time to reach us. tree →
• In the city, street lamps hide the starlight. tree →
• The owl hunted by starlight. tree →
• The poem describes silver starlight on the sea. tree →
• It was a lovely starlight night in the beginning of September, and the air was mild and still. tree →

note

Uncountable: «starlight», not «a starlight». Starlight is very dim compared with moonlight or sunlight. Fact: the Sun is a star too, but we call its light «sunlight». Stars seem to twinkle because their light passes through moving air.

In the corpora

• The James Webb Space Telescope can study the air of some exoplanets by looking at starlight that has passed through it.
• Splitting starlight into a rainbow, called a spectrum, shows dark lines that reveal which elements the star is made of.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «starlight» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.