Word.ws English Dictionary

illume

/ɪˈluːm/

illume verb: to throw or spread light upon; to make light or bright.

Verb

illume (third-person singular simple present illumes, present participle illuming, simple past and past participle illumed)

  1. (archaic, figuratively, poetic, usually) To throw or spread light upon; to make light or bright.
    • Laſt night of all, / When yond ſame Starre that's Weſtward from the Pole / Had made his courſe t’illume that part of Heauen / Where now it burnes, / Marcellus and my ſelfe, / The Bell then beating one.c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...
    • How dread the thunder's peal that rolls above !
      How bright the flashes that illume the sky !1819, Samuel Mcpherson Janney, “The last of the Lenapé, and Other Poems”, in Electricity
    Synonyms:
    illuminate, illumine

Noun

illume (uncountable)

  1. (archaic, figuratively, poetic, usually) Illumination.
    • Till lo! at once broad through the gloom, / The lightnings flash’d their dread illume, / Full on a rock by copse embound, / And tore and whirl’d its ruins round; […]1838, James Struthers, “The Woes of Separation. A Tale. Addressed to Separation.”, in Poetic Tales: with Other Poems and Songs, Glasgow: […] Bell and Bain, part IV, page 37
    • The abdication of belief / Makes the behavior small – / Better an ignis fatuus / Than no illume at all.c. 1882, Emily Dickinson, “An Ablative Estate”, in M[abel] L[oomis] Todd and M[illicent] T[odd] Bingham, editors, Bolts of Melody, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Row, published 1945, page 294

Examples of illume in a sentence

  • Brighter the sun illumed the suburbs, more / Ugly and absolute that shade's reproof […]1840 March, Robert Browning, “Book the Third”, in Sordello, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 123:
  • At night there is no light in this building, but searchlights from distant points illume the splendid dome and the colonnades.1915, Alfred Emanuel Smith, New Outlook, volume 109:

Synonyms of illume

Forms of illume

third-person singular presentillumes
present participleilluming
past participleillumed
pastillumed

Origin of illume

Clipping of illumine.

Words formed from illume

Words that rhyme with illume

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about illume

What does illume mean?
Illume means to throw or spread light upon; to make light or bright.
How do you use illume in a sentence?
Brighter the sun illumed the suburbs, more / Ugly and absolute that shade's reproof […]
What part of speech is illume?
Illume can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce illume?
Illume is pronounced /ɪˈluːm/.
What is the past tense of illume?
The past tense of illume is illumed.

Words near illume in the dictionary

  1. illuding
  2. illudins
  3. illui
  4. illuim
  5. illuk
  6. illume
  7. illumed
  8. illumer
  9. illumers
  10. illumes
  11. illuminability

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: illume (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-illume.wav.

Cite this entry: “illume.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/illume. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.