[L.; = dawn, goddess of the dawn, orient. Rarely in Fr. form aurore.]
1. The rising light of the morning; the dawn.
1483. Caxton, Gold. Leg., 430/4. On the thyrd nyght after, nygh the rysyng of aurora.
1638. Wilkins, New World, I. (1684), 57. I may call it Lumen crepusculinum, the Aurora of the moon.
1652. Urquhart, Jewel, Wks. (1834), 235. The antarctick oriency of a western aurore.
2. personified, The (Roman) goddess of the dawn, represented as rising with rosy fingers from the saffron-colored bed of Tithonus.
1587. Myrr. for Mag., Induct., i. 6. Sweete Aurora.
1645. Milton, L’Allegro, 19. Zephyr with Aurora playing, As he met her once a-maying.
1718. Pope, Iliad, VIII. 1. Aurora now, fair daughter of the dawn.
3. fig. The beginning, the early period; poet. for ‘rise,’ ‘dawn,’ ‘morn,’ in same fig. sense.
1844. Lingard, Anglo-Sax. Ch. (1858), II. xii. 197. The virtues which had so brilliantly illuminated the aurora of their church.
1858. Hawthorne, Fr. & It. Jrnls., II. 222. An aurora of mirth, which probably will not be very exuberant in its noon-tide.
4. poet. The East, the Orient. rare.
a. 1649. Drumm. of Hawth., Wks., 37/1. They make the Scythian them adore, The Gaditan, and souldier of Aurore.
5. A luminous atmospheric phenomenon, now considered to be of electrical character, occurring in the vicinity of, or radiating from, the earth’s northern or southern magnetic pole, and visible from time to time by night over more or less of the adjoining hemisphere, or even of the earth’s surface generally; popularly called the Northern (or Southern) Lights, merry-dancers, streamers, etc.
The northern lights, being alone conspicuous in Europe, had from the earliest periods various popular names in the northern languages; they began to attract scientific attention early in the 17th c., and were described by Gassendi in 1621 under the descriptive appellation of aurora borealis or ‘northern dawn,’ their simplest form suggesting the appearance of dawn or approaching sunrise on the northern horizon; this appellation (occasionally varied as aurora septentrionalis) passed into general scientific use. On the recognition of similar phenomena in the antarctic regions, these were called aurora australis or ‘southern lights’; whence aurora is now used generically as the proper term for the phenomenon, without any thought of ‘dawn,’ and with English plural auroras; and this has become the ordinary prose meaning of aurora, the preceding senses being only poetical.
1621. [1822. Burrowes, Cycl., s.v., On Sept. and, 1621, the same phenomenon was seen all over France; and it was particularly described by Gassendus in his Physics, who gave it the name of aurora borealis.]
1717. Phil. Trans., XXX. 584. On February the 5th, 1716–7, at Eight at Night, an Aurora Borealis appeared.
1727–51. Chambers, Cycl., Aurora Borealis or Aurora Septentrionalis, the northern dawn, or light; is an extraordinary meteor, or luminous appearence, shewing it self in the night-time, in the northern part of the heavens.
1741. Phil. Trans., XLI. 744 (title), An account of the Aurora Australis observed at Rome, January 27, 1740.
1788. Burns, Wks., II. 183. Last, she sublimes th’ Aurora of the poles, The flashing elements of female souls.
1823. Moore, Fables, Holy Alliance, i. 9.
| A dome of frost-work, on the plan | |
| Of that once built by Empress Anne, | |
| Which shone by moonlight—as the tale is— | |
| Like an aurora borealis. |
1835. Sir J. Ross, N.-W. Pass., xiv. 216. There was an aurora at night.
1852. W. Grove, Contrib. Sc., 359. In air rarefied by the air-pump an aurora or discharge of five or six inches long could be obtained.
1855. Scoffern, Pract. Meteorol., 98. After 1790 auroras became unfrequent, but since 1825 they have been on the increase.
1868. Lockyer, Heavens, 211. Lit up by auroræ and long lingering twilights.
1870. R. Ferguson, Electr., 37. The appearance of auroras is invariably accompanied by magnetic irregularities.
6. The color of the sky at the point of sun-rise; a rich orange hue.
1791. Hamilton, Berthollet’s Dyeing, II. II. § 4. iv. 273. For silks to be dyed of an aurora or orange colour.
1822. Imison, Sc. & Art, II. 189. If an orange, or an aurora be required.
1862. R. Patterson, Ess. Hist. & Art, 33. Orange-reds, such as scarlet, nacarat, and aurora.
7. Used as the popular or trivial name of various species of animals, as of a monkey (Chrysothrix sciurea), a sea-anemone, and as the fancy name of varieties of various flowers, e.g., of a ranunculus.
1774. Goldsm., Nat. Hist. (1862), I. VII. i. 508. The Samari, or Aurora; which is the smallest, and most beautiful of all monkeys that hold by the tail.
1858. G. H. Lewes, Sea Side Stud., Index.
8. Comb. Aurora australis, borealis, septentrionalis: see sense 5. Aurora-like a., like the dawn, like the aurora borealis; aurora-parrot, the species Psittacus Aurora; aurora-pole, one of the two points on the surface of the earth which form the centers of the luminous circles of the aurora borealis and australis; aurora-snake.
1877. Mrs. H. King, Discip., Ugo Bassi, I. 65. Filmy aurora-flowers Opened and died in the hour.
1580. Sidney, Arcadia (1622), 139. Aurora-like new out of bed.
1879. Hingston, Australian Abroad, iii. 24. Rays of light seemed, aurora-like, to shoot out from its crown.
1881. trans. Nordenskiöld’s Voy. Vega, II. xi. 40. A luminous crown … whose centre, ‘the aurora-pole,’ lies somewhat under the earth’s surface, a little north of the magnetic-pole.
