St. Elmo\'s fire

St. El·mo's fire

[el-mohz] .
Also called St. Elmo's light, St. Ulmo's fire, St. Ulmo's light.


Origin:
named after St. Elmo (died a.d. 303), patron saint of sailors

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St. Elmo's fire is always a great word to know.
So is callithumpian. Does it mean:
a children's mummer's parade, as on the Fourth of July, with prizes for the best costumes.
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
Dictionary.com Unabridged

Saint Elmo's fire

[el-mohz] .
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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American Heritage
Science Dictionary
Saint Elmo's fire   (sānt ěl'mōz)  Pronunciation Key 
A visible and sometimes audible electric discharge projecting from a pointed object, such as the mast of a ship or the wing of an airplane, during an electrical storm. First identified as an electrical phenomenon by Benjamin Franklin in 1749, St. Elmo's fire is a bluish-white plasma caused by the release of electrons in a strong electric field (200 or more volts per cm); the electrons have enough energy to ionize atoms in the air and cause them to glow. The phenomenon appears near pointed objects because electrical fields generated by charged surfaces are strongest where curves are sharpest. It is named after St. Elmo, the patron saint of mariners, as the phenomenon was often observed by sailors during thunderstorms at sea. See also lightning rod.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary
Copyright © 2002. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved.
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