st. elmo's fire

Questions about st. elmo's fire

What does st. elmo's fire mean?

st. elmo's fire means "an electrical discharge accompanied by ionization of surrounding atmosphere".

What is another word for st. elmo's fire?

Close synonyms include corona discharge, corona, corposant, Saint Elmo's fire, Saint Elmo's light. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is st. elmo's fire a common word?

st. elmo's fire is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.