illuminated

UK/ɪˈl(j)uːmɪneɪtɪd/US/ɪˈlumɪneɪtɪd/

adjectiveC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,579 of 15,258leans written

Illuminated means decorated with gold and coloured painting. An illuminated manuscript, illuminated initials, richly illuminated.

The gold is the point — illuminated means lit up, and real gold leaf catches candlelight so the page appears to glow. Monks did the work by hand, and a single great manuscript could take years. Note the ordinary sense, meaning lit.

Definitions of illuminated

1adjectiveilluminatedDecorated with gold and coloured painting.C1
“The library's treasure is an illuminated Bible, its pages bright with gold and blue.”

illuminated is a quality of decoration.

Practised in Antiques & Collecting

Practise this word

illuminated in the wild

An illuminated manuscript is a formally prepared document where the text is decorated with flourishes such as borders and miniature illustrations.
Illuminated manuscript
The earliest surviving illuminated manuscripts are a small number from late antiquity, and date from between 400 and 600 CE.
Illuminated manuscript
Many psalters were richly illuminated, and they include some of the most spectacular surviving examples of medieval book art.
Psalter
Miroslav Gospel is a 362-page Serbian Cyrillic illuminated manuscript Gospel Book on parchment with very rich decorations.
Miroslav Gospel
The goal of restoring illuminated manuscripts should be to make them resilient to damage while altering them as little as possible.
Conservation and restoration of illuminated manuscripts

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

← Vocabulary