Lumina

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. It can describe a source of light or the quality of radiance in an artistic or scientific framework
2. In biological terms, it often refers to a cavity or space within a tubular structure, such as in anatomy or botany
3. A term that signifies both a source of illumination and the aspect of glow that can be observed in various disciplines, including art and science

Etymology: "Lumina" is simply the plural of "lumen," so its story is really the story of the Latin noun behind it. In Latin, "lumen" meant "light" and also "an opening," the sense of a gap that lets light in, a window or aperture. That double meaning explains why the same root gave English both the idea of illumination and the idea of the hollow inside a tube. English borrowed "lumen" directly from Latin, and its most famous modern use is as a unit of luminous flux, the measure of total visible light a source emits. That unit was first adopted by the French physicist André Blondel in 1894, a fairly precise and recent coinage compared with the ancient word it came from.

Synonyms: lights, sources of light