brightness
the quality of being bright.
Optics. the luminance of a body, apart from its hue or saturation, that an observer uses to determine the comparative luminance of another body. Pure white has the maximum brightness, and pure black the minimum brightness.
Origin of brightness
1Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use brightness in a sentence
There was a bright May sunlight over it all, one of those still, cool brightnesses which served to heighten the weird effect.
Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete | Albert Bigelow PaineChanges in intensity give the different brightnesses: black, gray, and white.
The Science of Human Nature | William Henry PyleThat one beam will decompose into all colours and brightnesses.
The Expositor's Bible: Colossians and Philemon | Alexander MaclarenWe cannot move any special star, but we can examine stars of all brightnesses, and thus (presumably) of all distances.
Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works | Edward Singleton HoldenA minute more and I stood upon the shore of the mighty stream, between the two brightnesses of flood and heavens.
To Have and To Hold | Mary Johnston
British Dictionary definitions for brightness
/ (ˈbraɪtnɪs) /
the condition of being bright
physics a former name for luminosity (def. 4)
psychol the experienced intensity of light
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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