How to Use alight in a Sentence

alight

1 of 2 verb
  • A group of tourists alighted from the boat.
  • There are just too many doorsteps, and too many things that need to alight on them.
    — Amanda Mull, The Atlantic, 28 June 2023
  • Birds can flap their wings to swoop, dive, glide, and alight on perches.
    — Adam Hadhazy, Discover Magazine, 8 Feb. 2013
  • Just lie back, gaze upward, and streaks of bright light should alight your eyes.
    — Brian Resnick, Vox, 22 June 2018
  • Say each word was a bird—alighting briefly, out of reach and then gone again.
    — Leila Chatti september 5, Literary Hub, 5 Sep. 2025
  • The story that had been circling in his memory for years now seemed ready to alight.
    — Literary Hub, 12 Jan. 2026
  • There are beach breezes alighting on areas of my skin that have never felt breezes before.
    — Kaitlin Menza, Marie Claire, 29 Sep. 2017
  • Woodpeckers will sometimes alight on your house and start their rat-a-tat heading.
    — Adrian Higgins, Washington Post, 17 July 2019
  • Four alighted on a paper towel dispenser.
    — David J. Neal, Miami Herald, 24 Apr. 2026
  • The rockets hit at random, setting buildings and at least one car alight over different city blocks.
    — New York Times, 17 Apr. 2022
  • The Zaks wondered how the spill would affect birds, who could alight on an oily patch and absorb it in their feathers.
    — Matthew Ormseth, courant.com, 21 Jan. 2018
  • On cue, a pair of birds appeared, swooping through the air and alighting on dead trees to attack them like jackhammers.
    — Justin Gillis, The Seattle Times, 11 Aug. 2017
  • Then, while Louise was peering through the letterbox, our mother alighted from the back of a black cab.
    — Douglas Stuart, New Yorker, 12 Apr. 2026
  • Soon my wandering eye alighted on the next table, where two men were slurping a verdant broth — green curry pho.
    — Brooke Hauser, BostonGlobe.com, 6 Sep. 2023
  • Over the course of extended scenes, the eye roams the frame, alighting on the pop of natural and manmade details alike.
    — Sophie Monks Kaufman, IndieWire, 17 Feb. 2026
  • He's used to living like an emperor who relished nothing more than circling the globe and alighting to pose with heads of state.
    — Fortune, 10 Jan. 2020
  • Many protesters set their headscarves alight or hacked off their hair, and called for the downfall of the Iranian regime.
    — Adela Suliman, Washington Post, 6 Oct. 2022
  • His face is alight with the glow of discovery—equal parts scientific interest and little-boy hope.
    — Mike Sager, Smithsonian, 13 Sep. 2017
  • During that stay, the pair took a bus to Washington, alighting at the Greyhound station.
    — John Kelly, Washington Post, 31 July 2023
  • Areas that almost never burn, including rain forests home to rare, endemic species, have alighted.
    — Carolyn Kormann, The New Yorker, 15 Jan. 2020
  • Among the passengers who alighted was a young woman from Santa Barbara.
    — Peter Rowe, San Diego Union-Tribune, 28 Aug. 2019
  • Every day, social media is alight with users posting the green and yellow boxes indicating their scores.
    — Leah Asmelash, CNN, 1 Feb. 2022
  • The 300 Angels are alighting today because it was declared the date of the founding of the city.
    — Doug MacCash, NOLA.com, 7 May 2018
  • The second was to build what amounts to a nonflammable moat around a home to prevent embers from alighting on anything next to a house that could burn and ignite the structure.
    — Bloomberg, Mercury News, 12 Aug. 2025
  • Like teenagers walking into a cafeteria, bumblebees can make quick social calculations about the safest place to alight for a meal.
    — Elizabeth Preston, Discover Magazine, 9 May 2014
  • And on Monday night, a bouquet of flowers alight with Christmas ornaments appeared in front of vacant homes.
    — Los Angeles Times, 23 Dec. 2020
  • The music fans who would have streamed into Coachella and the cinephiles alighting in Cannes retrace ancient routs and rites of pilgrimage.
    — New York Times, 20 Mar. 2020
  • Rebecca ends with the housekeeper (also obsessed with the dead Rebecca) setting the house alight.
    — Meg Walters, Glamour, 9 Mar. 2026
  • The idea also ties in with the marble angels that have alighted in our signature high-rise cemeteries and our incurable compulsion to costume.
    — Doug MacCash, NOLA.com, 30 Apr. 2018
  • For some time, there has been an assumption that — at one point or another — the Premier League will inevitably alight upon its own version of this approach.
    — Rory Smith, New York Times, 8 Dec. 2023

alight

2 of 2 adjective
  • The sky was alight with stars.
  • Enemy soldiers set the building alight.
  • Yet his bland style has not set the broader electorate alight.
    — Washington Post, 16 Jan. 2021
  • Participants set a ring of fire alight in the street.
    — Jesse Zanger, CBS News, 24 Apr. 2026
  • Detectives think it was set alight sometime in the past 15 days.
    — Washington Post, 11 Aug. 2021
  • Adults carrying babies and holding the hands of young children alight from the craft.
    — Los Angeles Times, 23 Mar. 2021
  • Dozens of trucks carrying lumber have been set alight in furious protest.
    — Eduardo Thomson, Bloomberg.com, 15 Oct. 2020
  • The black flame candle is alight to the Sanderson sisters' delight.
    — Chloe Melas, CNN, 2 Nov. 2021
  • The black flame candle is alight to the Sanderson sisters’ delight.
    — Alexia Fernández, PEOPLE.com, 1 Nov. 2021
  • Less than an hour before the game started the skies were alight with lightning and a heavy downpour deluged the field.
    — Brendan Kurie, BostonGlobe.com, 13 Nov. 2021
  • The first victims are seabirds, graceful creatures that alight upon the ocean’s surface.
    — Los Angeles Times, 5 Oct. 2021
  • Art finds a way to occupy almost any material and alight in any tool.
    — Jerry Saltz, Vulture, 15 Apr. 2021
  • Millions of butterflies alight on oyamel firs, pines and junipers.
    — Smithsonian Magazine, 21 Apr. 2021
  • No brow aglow like Narekatsi or Kuchak, Cross the world, no height alight like Ararat.
    — Simon Maghakyan, Time, 30 Jan. 2026
  • At checkpoints, choking plumes of black smoke rise from burning tires set alight by security forces to keep warm.
    — New York Times, 7 Feb. 2022
  • These units affix lights to wheel spokes, which rotate rapidly enough to give the impression that the entire wheel is alight.
    — David Schneider, IEEE Spectrum, 30 Mar. 2018
  • At the end of the evening, the audience filed out, masks still on, eyes alight with elation at having finally heard a show.
    — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 7 June 2021
  • The governors deal every day with people who are alight with causes, often aggrieved and in need.
    — Caroline Mimbs Nyce, New Yorker, 2 June 2026
  • For nearly two weeks, the Scottsdale Waterfront will be alight with large-scale works by artists from around the world.
    — Kimi Robinson, The Arizona Republic, 2 Nov. 2021
  • Another skirt was set alight by cigarette ember, whilst smoking in the toilet.
    — Ncbi Rofl, Discover Magazine, 15 May 2012
  • Video posted online showed protesters gathered around the alight building.
    — NBC News, 1 June 2020
  • The man had spilled gasoline on himself while trying to start a fire and accidentally set himself alight.
    — Sara Tabin, The Salt Lake Tribune, 25 Mar. 2021
  • Residents will be able to dive off at one side and alight at the other, which is certainly a glamorous, if damp, way to call in on your neighbors.
    — Maureen O'Hare, CNN, 26 Apr. 2021
  • In Yangon, five public city buses caught fire before dawn, with no indications of who might have set them alight.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 12 Apr. 2021
  • Often, a pair of pigeons alight on nearby rooftops, their cooing a gentle nudge that a larger world still exists beyond our fraught lives.
    — Washington Post, 11 Dec. 2020
  • Videos of burning Ukrainian wheat fields set alight by Russian forces are making the rounds on social media.
    — Eric Tegler, Forbes, 12 July 2022
  • In Lagos, several key buildings have been attacked and set alight by unknown persons.
    — Yomi Kazeem, Quartz Africa, 21 Oct. 2020
  • Brathwaite saw a young man taking photos in a dark jazz club without the use of a flash, and his mind became alight with possibility.
    — Wallace Ludel, CNN, 4 Apr. 2023
  • Setting ants alight with a magnifying glass, as children are sometimes taught to do for fun, is a different matter.
    — Lars Chittka, Scientific American, 14 June 2023
  • Three Thousand Years of Longing were allowed to have their fun, setting the red carpet alight.
    — Douglas Greenwood, Vogue, 30 May 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'alight.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: