Other forms: candles
A candle is a stick of wax with a string down the middle that burns with a small soft flame. The ones you blow out on a birthday cake, the fat scented one on a bathroom shelf, the packet kept in a drawer for power cuts.
The string is the wick, and the light a candle gives is candlelight, which is the whole point of a candlelit dinner. You light a candle and you blow it out; nobody turns a candle off. A candlestick is the holder it stands in, and chandelier, from the French word for candle, once meant a rack of them. Two old phrases still get plenty of use: to burn the candle at both ends is to work early and late until you fall over, and somebody who cannot hold a candle to another is nowhere near as good.
1nouncandleA stick of wax with a wick through the middle, burned to give light or scent.
“The power went off and she lit a candle on the kitchen table.”
synonyms: taper
candle is a source of light.
Candle is one of the oldest borrowings in English: Old English candel, taken straight from Latin candēla, which comes from the verb candeō, to be white, bright and shining. The same Latin brightness gives us candid, a word for someone whose speech has nothing hidden in it. The Romans named the object after the light, not the wax.
Middle English
candel
English, today
candle
From Middle English candel. From Middle English candel, from Old English candel (“candle”), borrowed from Latin candēla (“candle”), from Latin candeō (“be white, bright, shining”); see candid. a doublet of candela and chandelle.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA