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Beacon   /bˈikən/   Listen
noun
Beacon  n.  
1.
A signal fire to notify of the approach of an enemy, or to give any notice, commonly of warning. "No flaming beacons cast their blaze afar."
2.
A signal, such as that from a lighthouse, or a conspicuous mark erected on an eminence near the shore, or moored in shoal water, as a guide to mariners.
3.
A high hill near the shore. (Prov. Eng.)
4.
That which gives notice of danger. "Modest doubt is called The beacon of the wise."
5.
(Navigation) A radio transmitter which emits a characteristic signal indication its location, so that vehicles may determine their exact location by locating the beacon with a radio compass; also called radio beacon.
6.
(fig.) That which provides guidance or inspiration; the Constitution has been a beacon for civil rights activists.
Beacon fire, a signal fire.


verb
Beacon  v. t.  (past & past part. beaconed; pres. part. beaconing)  
1.
To give light to, as a beacon; to light up; to illumine. "That beacons the darkness of heaven."
2.
To furnish with a beacon or beacons.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Beacon" Quotes from Famous Books



... away, like a rose-leaf on the wind. Before her she saw a flame in the air, a flashing light high up on a tower. The beacon light shone from the goal of her longing, shone from the red lighthouse tower of the Fata Morgana of the Champ de Mars. Thither she was carried by the wind. She circled round the tower; the workmen thought it was a butterfly that had come too early, and that ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... of the party was broken up, the fire which had burned hitherto in but a single beacon was scattered upon a thousand hills. Nevertheless, the first breaking up of the party was eminently disheartening to its living members. But it was not by external violence that it was broken, but by the development within itself of a distinctive Romeward bias. Dr. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... were but a handful, yet so fecund was their marvelous zeal that they became the spiritual leaven of their whole community. They are less known than Plymouth and Salem, because men of action, rather than men of letters, have sprung from the loins of the South; but there they stand, a beautiful beacon, shining upon the coasts of our early history. Into their church, then, into the shrine where their small lamp still burns, their devout descendant, Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael led our party, because in her eyes Kings Port could show nothing more precious and significant. There ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... the annals of no country, catholic or pagan, may ever be stained with such a repetition of human sacrifices to papal power, and that the detestation in which the character of Mary is holden, may be a beacon to succeeding monarchs to avoid the rocks ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... fair criterion for judging of the morality of a country; for that she who sins and flies is less hardened in guilt than she who remains and deceives: and the example is also less pernicious, as the one who has forfeited her place in society serves as a beacon to warn others; while she whose errors are known, yet still retains hers, is a dangerous instance of the indulgence afforded to hardened duplicity. It is not the horror of guilt, but the dread of its exposure, that operates on the generality ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner


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