international candle
- noun
- Archaic
:
vela internacional
- The international candle was the standard until the introduction of the candela in 1948.
Examples
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Modern lighting calculations no longer use the international candle due to updated SI standards.
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Laboratories once measured light sources using the international candle as their reference.
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The international candle was widely used in the past.
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Many scientists now refer to the international candle as obsolete.
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Laboratories once measured light sources using the international candle as their reference.
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Modern lighting calculations no longer use the international candle due to updated SI standards.
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The international candle was the standard until the introduction of the candela in 1948.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'international' (standardized among countries) modifies 'candle' (here a unit of luminous intensity), so a learner who knows those constituent senses can infer it refers to an internationally defined candle unit. The adjective+noun pattern is a regular, cross-linguistic noun phrase formation rather than an idiom, so the meaning is transparent.
Etymology
The noun international candle comes from the old practice of using a real candle flame as a shared standard of light between countries. That's why it was a 'unit' for measuring brightness and why it was later replaced by the modern 'candela'.
