Standard Lemma guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.
noun
Obsolete form of elf.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: alt-of, obsolete
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
A rapidly expanding disk-shaped region of red luminosity in the ionosphere, lasting less than a thousandth of a second, which occurs high above energetic cloud-to-ground lightning of positive or negative polarity.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Topics: astronomy, climatology, meteorology, natural-sciences
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
History
Obsolete form of elf.
From e(mission of) l(ight and) v(ery low-frequency perturbations from) e(lectromagnetic pulse sources), and to avoid clashing with the acronym ELF (extremely low frequency) used in the same field of science.
Across languages
2 source translations are retained for this English entry.
