JACK-O'-LANTERN • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Jack-o'-lantern

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/dʒæk-oʊ-lˈæntərn/ Listen

noun

Jack-with-a-lantern, Jack-o'-lantern n.

(Biol.) A large orange-colored luminescent mushroom, Clitocybe illudens, also classified as Omphalotus olearius. It is poisonous and is sometimes found on hardwood tree stumps.

Synonyms: jack-a-lantern, Clitocybe illudens.

A pale light sometimes seen at night over marshy ground; an ignis fatuus; a will-o'-the-wisp. "(Newspaper speculations) supplying so many more jack-o'-lanterns to the future historian."

Synonyms: friar's lantern, ignis fatuus, will-o'-the-wisp.

A lantern carved from a hollowed-out pumpkin, with holes cut in the rind and so shaped that when it is illuminated by a candle inside, the features of a human face, cat's face, etc. appear in a glowing yellow color. It is used mostly as a decoration at Halloween.

See images of 'Jack-o'-lantern'

Etymology of 'Jack-o'-lantern'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Jack-o'-lantern" Quotes from Famous Books

... before the wheel, and in it sat smoking cigar after cigar from the Indian D box, half-asleep, yet conscious. The moon came up into a pretty cloudless sky, and she was bright, but not bright enough to out-shine the enlightened flight of the ocean, which that night was one continuous swamp of Jack-o'-lantern phosphorescence, a wild but faint luminosity mingled with stars and flashes of brilliance, the whole trooping unanimously eastward, as if in haste with elfin momentous purpose, a boundless congregation, in the sweep ...

— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... proved his wisdom. When he returned in a very short time from that ever-to-be-famous spring, with his brimming kettle, he found a glorious fire, and three tired but cheerful fellows watching it, its reflection playing like a jack-o'-lantern ...

— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook