northern lights
8
3.6
- noun
- /ˈnɔrðərn laɪts/
:
auroras boreales
- In Norway, tourists flock to witness the breathtaking display of the northern lights during winter.
- see the northern lights
- northern lights dance
- display of northern lights
Like we just had four or five hours of Northern Lights.
- Like we just had four or five hours of Northern Lights.
- Wow, we saw the Northern Lights tonight.
- It was my goal to fly from London to Catila to see the Northern Lights.
- But I mean, damn, folks, the Northern Lights, like, they're my thing.
- It was from his perspective after they do it and it said watching Eve come was like watching the Northern Lights.
- And it turns out that you could read the newspaper at night in Cuba by the light of the Northern Lights.
Examples
-
Austin Yoder's frequent flyer miles get him to Yellowknife, Canada, for spring break to see the northern lights.
Blog text (14) -
I explained to him what my mother had once told me about the northern lights, how they were lights from heaven.
Fiction book (1998) -
Wow, we saw the Northern Lights tonight.
-
Want to see the northern lights?
-
"Look at the northern lights," I said.
Fiction book (1994) -
Once, she tried to describe the northern lights to her father.
Fiction book (1999) -
When January 2010 rolled around, seeing the northern lights was way high on my list of things to do.
Blog text (14) -
We'll walk under those radiant, cold northern lights.
-
There is no better way to teach about the wonders of the glimmering northern lights than to show them in action.
Academic text (1996) -
The northern lights had flared up again, an eerie wash rising and disappearing.
Fiction book (1994)
Synonyms
12
7.4
Bright moving lights in the night sky near the North or South Pole
4
7.6
A natural show of bright, colorful lights in the night sky in northern regions
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is directly built from 'northern' (in the north) + 'lights' (visible luminous phenomena), so a B1 learner who knows both words can infer it refers to lights seen in northern skies. Although it names the specific phenomenon aurora borealis, the meaning is compositionally transparent and easily describable across languages.
Etymology
The noun northern lights comes from the simple image of bright lights in the northern sky that seem to dance and change color at night. So today northern lights means the natural, colorful 'sky show' you can see in the far north.