empyreal

Definitions

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

  • adjective Formed of pure fire or light; refined beyond aërial substance; pertaining to the highest and purest region of heaven.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  • noun The empyrean; the region of celestial purity.

Examples

  • In this remarkable book he tells of his discovery of oxygen -- "empyreal" or "fire-air," as he calls it -- which he seems to have made independently and without ever having heard of the previous discovery by Priestley.

    A History of Science: in Five Volumes. Volume IV: Modern Development of the Chemical and Biological Sciences

  • And then it was gone: giant, empyreal prisoner, and the light that had framed them, leaving behind only the veldt and the scandalized night.

    Carnivores of Light and Darkness

  • With a soft, empyreal hiss, it saw itself sucked up by the thorns, until only a last wisp of noxious vapor remained to show where it had once writhed.

    Into the Thinking Kingdoms

  • Spirits in the form of angels or demons, good or bad — souls with spiritual bodies — inhabited the empyreal heavens, planets, or elements.

    Dictionary of the History of Ideas

  • Henceforth he is to fight his way through the storms of life and passion -- to pass onward and upward and at last to rise to 'higher spheres'; and amidst the fierce and insidious assaults of flesh and devil we shall see that he looks for strength and guidance to this Spirit that appeared to him in the blinding vision of living empyreal flame.

    The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust'

Note

The word 'empyreal' comes from a Greek root meaning 'fiery'.