phosphor

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a substance that emits light after being excited by radiation or another form of energy, as in fluorescent lamps and display screens

   The display uses a blue-emitting phosphor to convert electrical energy into light.

2. 2
   noun

   historical or poetic: a self-luminous substance, organism, or phosphorescent glow

   Behind the ship, a pale phosphor gleamed in the disturbed water.

3. 3
   noun

   obsolete chemistry: phosphorus

   Early chemists sometimes called the element phosphor rather than phosphorus.

4. 4
   noun

   literary, usually capitalized: the planet Venus when it appears as the morning star

   Before dawn, poets watched Phosphor rise above the eastern horizon.

From Medieval Latin phosphorus and Greek phosphoros, light-bearing, formed from phos, light, and pherein, to carry. The word first named the morning star and things that shone; chemistry later applied it to phosphorus and then more precisely to materials that luminesce when energized.

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