moonbeam
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: compound
Etymology: Compound of moon + beam.
Compound parts: moon
beam
Inflected forms:
form: moonbeams
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: moon beam
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: moon-beam
pos: noun
tags: alternative
archaic
Senses:
gloss: A ray or shaft of moonlight.
pos: noun
examples: Holonym: moonlight
Be kinde and curteous to this gentleman, / Hop in his walkes, and gambole in his eyes, / Feede him with Apricocks, and Dewberries, / With purple Grapes, greene figges, and Mulberries, / The hony bagges ſteale from the humble Bees, / And for night tapers, croppe their waxen thighes, / And light them with at the fiery Glowe-wormes eyes, / To haue my loue to bedde, and to ariſe, / And pluck the wings, from painted Butterflies, / To fanne the Moone-beames from his ſleeping eyes, / Nod to him Elues, and doe him curteſies.
A moonbeam pierced the heavy cloud!
Quickly the moon sent a moonbeam down, and it shone through the window, right on the face of the sleeping child, kissed him, and gave him a pleasant dream.
The mountain flanked on the east by Devil's Peak and glancing to the right Lion's Head and Signal Hill shimmers and the residents at the foot of the mountain bask in the splendour of moonbeams.
gloss: Any of various Australasian lycaenid butterflies of the genus Philiris.
pos: noun
gloss: Someone who tends to be dreamy and prone to unrealistic romanticism.
pos: noun
examples: While you're responding to the dithering confusing Lynda is causing in the bus depot, you're absorbing the emotions between mother and child. Darcy is often very grownup around her mother, as if she knew that Lynda is a bit of a moonbeam and needs looking after.
Dreaming of the mountain was for moonbeams, he told me, not for people who had been born up there.
You really are a moonbeam. The way I remember it, most of the shouting and protesting was coming from young guys who had college deferments and were worried what would happen when they got out of school and the deferment ran out and they couldn't get a job teaching in a ghetto school so they could get another deferment.
You are such a moonbeam. Now come here and kiss me.
gloss: A goal or aspiration that appears attractive but is ultimately insubstantial.
pos: noun
examples: Therefore it has always seemed clear to me, and that has been the decision of the Senate for many years before when we have had these questions stoutly contested, that where the direction (which is legislation, of course, just as the appropriation is) is confined to the appropriation, to the expenditure of the money appropriated, which can not be paid out of the Treasury without the consent of Congress, Congress may say that it shall be paid for moonbeams, if it pleases, although the Constitution of the United States itself might say that no money should be paid for buying moonbeams.
So much for moonbeams and politics.
So the idea of Common Cause and other reform advacates that government corruption can be ended by public financing of election campaigns is just another silly moonbeam.
It did not take long to realize that the dozens of missions we were running all over southern Iraq were really nothing more than an occasionally dangerous hunt for moonbeams, and that the British mission as a whole was losing its way.
Related words: moonshot
Translations: