From WordNet (r) 2.0 (August 2003) [wn]:
aurora
n 1: the first light of day; "we got up before dawn"; "they
talked until morning" [syn: dawn, dawning,
morning, first light, daybreak, break of day,
break of the day, dayspring, sunrise, sunup,
cockcrow] [ant: sunset]
2: an atmospheric phenomenon consisting of bands of light
caused by charged solar particles following the earth's
magnetic lines of force
3: (Roman mythology) goddess of the dawn; counterpart of Greek
Eos [syn: Aurora]
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Aurora \Au*ro"ra\, n.; pl. E. Auroras, L. (rarely used)
{Auror[ae]}. [L. aurora, for ausosa, akin to Gr. ?, ?, dawn,
Skr. ushas, and E. east.]
1. The rising light of the morning; the dawn of day; the
redness of the sky just before the sun rises.
[1913 Webster]
2. The rise, dawn, or beginning. --Hawthorne.
[1913 Webster]
3. (Class. Myth.) The Roman personification of the dawn of
day; the goddess of the morning. The poets represented her
a rising out of the ocean, in a chariot, with rosy fingers
dropping gentle dew.
[1913 Webster]
4. (Bot.) A species of crowfoot. --Johnson.
[1913 Webster]
5. The aurora borealis or aurora australis (northern or
southern lights).
[1913 Webster]
Aurora borealis, i. e., northern daybreak; popularly called
northern lights. A luminous meteoric phenomenon, visible
only at night, and supposed to be of electrical origin.
This species of light usually appears in streams,
ascending toward the zenith from a dusky line or bank, a
few degrees above the northern horizon; when reaching
south beyond the zenith, it forms what is called the
corona, about a spot in the heavens toward which the
dipping needle points. Occasionally the aurora appears as
an arch of light across the heavens from east to west.
Sometimes it assumes a wavy appearance, and the streams of
light are then called merry dancers. They assume a variety
of colors, from a pale red or yellow to a deep red or
blood color. The
Aurora australisis a corresponding phenomenon in the
southern hemisphere, the streams of light ascending in the
same manner from near the southern horizon.
[1913 Webster]
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (19 Sep 2003) [foldoc]:
Aurora
["The Aurora Or-Parallel Prolog System", E. Lusk et al, Proc
3rd Intl Conf on Fifth Generation Comp Systems, pp. 819-830,
ICOT, A-W 1988].