Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Not luminous; not accompanied by or not producing incandescence.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Not capable of producing light, but can be capable of reflecting light from another source.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

non- +‎ luminous

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Examples

  • A dab of real oil paint was given to become the tiny lights in the tiny windows of the tiny house of the print, so that the luminous quality of real oil paint, relative to the non-luminous quality of print, made the dabs of paint look as if there were real tiny lights actually lit up in the "painting's" windows.

    My Own "Star Warz" Part Two 2009

  • But the “kryptonite” in Serbia is a white, opaque, non-luminous, powdery substance, not a green, glowing, crystalline substance, so other than the composition made up in the movie which has nothing to do with the amazingly-ubiquitous remains of the planet Krypton, they have nothing whatsoever in common.

    EXTRALIFE – By Scott Johnson - ‘Kryptonite’ discovered in mine 2007

  • Colour of a non-luminous object: colour sensation caused by a non-luminous object.

    2. Elements Frank Ponemunski 1991

  • No: only the fire, and when that goes inward the surface consists only of the non-luminous body; the fire can no longer act towards the outer.

    The Six Enneads. Plotinus 1952

  • By covering these holes with a loose adjustable collar, the amount of admissible air can be regulated so that the flame is perfectly non-luminous, and therefore containing no free particles of carbon or soot.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 417, December 29, 1883 Various

  • Solid matter is most easily provided by burning a gas rich in dense hydrocarbons, not a poor and non-luminous gas.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 Various

  • The great wave of light going out from the star when at its brightest traveled in five weeks as far as the ring of nebulosity, where, falling upon non-luminous nebulous materials, it made the ring visible.

    Popular Science Monthly Oct, Nov, Dec, 1915 — Volume 86 Anonymous

  • And if one wants to boil a kettle, it will be done, not by putting it into a non-luminous flame, and so interfering with the combustion, but by holding it near to a freely burning regenerated flame, and using the radiation only.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 Various

  • There are suspended in this room self-luminous bodies which enable us by their rays or lines of force to see the non-luminous bodies with which we are surrounded.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 417, December 29, 1883 Various

  • The theory that I advance to account for the several phenomena relating to comets 'tails is, that comets are non-luminous, transparent bodies; that they transmit the light of the sun; that the transmitted light reflected by the particles of matter in space constitutes the tails of comets.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 Various

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