scintillating

English

Etymology

From scintillate +‎ -ing.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌsɪntɪˈleɪtɪŋ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌsɪntəˈleɪtɪŋ/
• Hyphenation: scin‧til‧lat‧ing

Verb

scintillating

1. present participle and gerund of scintillate.

Adjective

scintillating (comparative more scintillating, superlative most scintillating)

1. That scintillates with brief flashes of light; sparkling.
   • 1994, Edward St Aubyn, Bad News, Picador, published 2006, page 147:

     On the scintillating water yellow and blue boats bobbed up and down.

   • 2012 October 13, quoting Nguyen Chi Thien, “Nguyen Chi Thien: Nguyen Chi Thien, a Vietnamese poet, died on October 2nd, aged 73”, in The Economist^[1], archived from the original on 13 October 2012:

     They sank me into the ocean / Wishing me to remain in the depths. / I became a deep sea diver / And came up covered with scintillating pearls.

2. (figurative) Brilliantly or impressively clever, exciting, amusing or witty.
   • 1864, Edgar Allan Poe, The Literati of New York - No. II - Anna Cora Mowatt:

     Her sketches and tales may be said to be cleverly written. They are lively, easy, conventional, scintillating with a species of sarcastic wit, which might be termed good were it in any respect original.

   • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:

     The humor of my proposition appealed more strongly to Miss Trevor than I had looked for, and from that time forward she became her old self again; […]. Our table in the dining-room became again the abode of scintillating wit and caustic repartee, Farrar bracing up to his old standard, and the demand for seats in the vicinity rose to an animated competition.

   • 1964 March 24, Irvine Paris, “John Lennon in His Own Wrong: Farcical Poetry or Poetical Farce?”, in The Liverpool Herald:

     For the last thirteen months, Beatles cofounder John Lennon has been Liverpool's darling. He can do no wrong. His group's music is scintillating. His public demeanor has been exemplary. He is a credit to our city, to rock 'n' roll musicians, and to the undead.

   • 2011 January 29, Ian Hughes, “Southampton 1–2 Man Utd”, in BBC Sport‎^[2], archived from the original on 21 April 2016:

     The hosts maintained their discipline and shape, even threatening to grab a second goal on the break – left-back Dan Harding made a scintillating run, skipping past a few challenges before prodding a right-footed shot that did not match his build-up.

   • 2012, Jaś Elsner, “Iconoclasm as Discourse: From Antiquity to Byzantium”, in The Art Bulletin‎^[3], volume 94, number 3, pages 368-394:

     A scintillating example of where the cultural politics of iconoclasm and of representation coincide, in the Hellenistic world, is offered by an inscription of the fourth century BCE from Delphi.

   • 2022 August 29, Michelle Goldberg, “The Book That Explains Our Cultural Stagnation”, in The New York Times‎^[4], →ISSN:

     Lots of people are looking for something scintillating and new and not finding it.

Derived terms

• scintillatingly
• scintillatingness

 

Translations

sparkling

• Russian: искря́щийся (ru) (iskrjáščijsja)
• Swedish: blixtrande (sv), bländande (sv), gnistrande (sv)

witty

• Russian: искромётный (ru) (iskromjótnyj)
• Swedish: bländande (sv)