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say it: en-LAHY-tuhn-muhnt
enlightenment is a noun meaning "education that results in understanding and the spread of knowledge". It carries 3 recorded senses.
education that results in understanding and the spread of knowledge
(Hinduism and Buddhism) the beatitude that transcends the cycle of reincarnation; characterized by the extinction of desire and suffering and individual consciousness
Hinduism · Buddhism
a movement in Europe from about 1650 until 1800 that advocated the use of reason and individualism instead of tradition and established doctrine
“the Enlightenment brought about many humanitarian reforms”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for enlightenment come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.