light

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Not weighing much; easy to lift or carry.

   The bag is light enough for a child to carry.

2. 2
   adj

   Full of light; bright.

   The room is light when the shutters are open.

3. 3
   adj

   Pale in colour.

   She painted the walls a light blue.

4. 4
   adj

   Small in amount, degree, or force.

   There was only light traffic on the way to work.

5. 5
   adv

   With little to carry.

   Experienced travellers prefer to travel light.

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Simplified etymology

The two words spelled light have separate origins. Light meaning “illumination” shares an ancient ancestor with Greek leukos, “white,” and Latin lux, while light meaning “not heavy” comes from the same ancient root as lung, whose name reflects the lungs’ relative lightness among the internal organs. Lightning developed from lighten in its older sense “shed light on.”

From Middle English liȝt, lyghte, from Old English lēht, lēoht, līht, from Proto-West Germanic *lį̄ht, from Proto-Germanic *linhtaz or *līhtaz (“light (in weight)”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁lengʷʰ- (“lightweight”). Cognates Cognate with Dutch licht (“light (not heavy)”), German leicht (“light (not heavy)”), Luxembourgish liicht (“lightweight”), Vilamovian łajcht (“easy”), Yiddish לײַכט (laykht, “light (of low weight)”), Danish let (“light (not heavy)”), Faroese lættur (“light (of weight); easy (to do)”), Icelandic léttur (“light (not weighing much); easy”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian N…

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary