slant of sunlight
- noun
:
rayo de sol
- It hove in plain sight perhaps two blocks away, though in Central Park distance was measured not in blocks but in strides, as time was measured not in hours but in the slant of sunlight through the leaves.
Examples
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He paused to admire the slant of sunlight filtering through the trees, casting delicate patterns on the ground.
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In the narrowing slant of sunlight, she tilted her face toward the sky, like a greeting.
Fiction book (1999) -
The deepening slant of sunlight cast long black shadows across the tundra, glinting silver from the new leaves on the sedges and wormwood.
Fiction book (1990) -
I blink and see a slant of sunlight slipping through purple tongues of African violets on the windowsill beside my grandmother's secretary in my mother's living room.
Fiction book (1996) -
As the sun began to set, a beautiful slant of sunlight illuminated the room, creating a warm atmosphere.
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The artist captured the gentle slant of sunlight on the riverbank in his painting.
Synonyms
How Slanted
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'slant' (an angle or incline) combined with 'sunlight' (light from the sun) yields a ray or angle of sunlight. The 'X of Y' possession/part structure is a common, transparent pattern cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words should understand it.
Etymology
Slant of sunlight comes from a simple image: a thin, tilted beam of sunlight shining through a window and lighting dust in the air. The word slant means a tilted 'angle' and sunlight is the sun's light, so the phrase describes that single angled 'beam' of light that falls across a room.