The quality of being bright, shining, or radiant.
Formed by combining the Latin-derived adjective fulgent with the English suffix -ness, which creates abstract nouns from adjectives. The base fulgent comes from Latin fulgēre 'to shine.' This pattern of building nouns with -ness became highly productive in Middle and Early Modern English.
English has multiple ways to express the same concept—fulgency, fulgentness, and fulgour all mean roughly the same thing, but they came from different etymological paths. This is why English has such a rich and often confusing vocabulary for describing light!
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