What's the difference between ablaze and alight?

Ablaze


Definition:

  • (adv. & a.) On fire; in a blaze, gleaming.
  • (adv. & a.) In a state of glowing excitement or ardent desire.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He was burnt alive along with three customers as flames from the car set his carpet shop ablaze.
  • (2) Ten days after the consulate was stormed, thousands of Benghazi residents, some carrying American flags and placards mourning Stevens, stormed the base of Sharia, setting it ablaze.
  • (3) The epic struggle to keep Greece solvent and in the eurozone intensified on Saturday night amid signs of a looming crisis within the anti-austerity government that took Europe ablaze barely three months ago.
  • (4) In the western port of Izmir, protesters threw fire bombs at the offices of the ruling AK party and television footage showed part of the building ablaze.
  • (5) At the Green, where a local supermarket was set ablaze on Monday night, police kept the volunteers behind a cordon for fear of falling material from the building.
  • (6) Darkness has descended across Washington; but Frazier's hotel room is ablaze with light.
  • (7) Glasgow, June 2007 A Jeep loaded with petrol was driven into Glasgow airport and set ablaze.
  • (8) There are cars and buildings ablaze and the threat of violence.
  • (9) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tents set ablaze at North Dakota pipeline protest campsite “The thing about the No DAPL movement is that it’s everywhere,” Fielder said.
  • (10) By the end of the afternoon, dozens of cars were ablaze.
  • (11) Shell has scooped and dumped the oil inside pits and set them ablaze, incinerating local farmland .
  • (12) Rioters had smashed windows to loot a branch of Timpsons before setting it ablaze.
  • (13) 6.4.1994 Emmerdale ablaze When someone points to a box of fireworks and says, "They should be in the cellar", you know the whole place is about to go up in a dazzling racket of rockets.
  • (14) By the time the violence finally waned nearly three weeks later, 9,000 cars had been set ablaze in 250 towns and cities from Paris to Marseille, Toulouse to Rennes, Bordeaux to Strasbourg.
  • (15) The central question is what Modi as chief minister of Gujarat did or didn't do in the anti-Muslim violence that erupted in his state in February 2002, after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims was set ablaze and around 60 passengers died.
  • (16) The critic Kenneth Tynan was entranced, describing her as being "ablaze like a diamond in a mine".
  • (17) The 164ft (50 metre) ghost ship survived an initial barrage of 25mm shells that left it ablaze but still afloat.
  • (18) Dozens of militants arrived by motorised canoe at a fishing village on the shores of Lake Chad early on Friday morning, setting houses ablaze and attacking a police station.
  • (19) Limited-edition, museum-quality prints, some burned on the edges – they must have tried to set the house ablaze – some soiled with water and mud.
  • (20) In what appeared to be a well-organised plan, young protesters armed with petrol bombs and wearing masks, set buildings ablaze as police fired stun guns and rounds of teargas in retaliation.

Alight


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To spring down, get down, or descend, as from on horseback or from a carriage; to dismount.
  • (v. i.) To descend and settle, lodge, rest, or stop; as, a flying bird alights on a tree; snow alights on a roof.
  • (v. i.) To come or chance (upon).
  • (a.) Lighted; lighted up; in a flame.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Alighting upon the final four songs recorded by Drake, he pressed play and began to make notes before setting about mixing them for this putative release.
  • (2) The promise of exclusive photos and an "official chatroom" doesn't exactly set our world alight – but White is also promising subscribers four 7" records, four 12" records and four new T-shirts a year.
  • (3) Others wrecked the villa interior, poured fuel on the floor and set it alight.
  • (4) Villas of government officials were set alight and gunfire erupted in several districts of the city.
  • (5) (An official report later concluded that one of the men had set the van alight, killed the other and then himself.)
  • (6) That expectation was realized, with passengers from the oldest age groups having the highest relative frequency of accidents and vehicles with three steps being involved in a disproportionately large share of boarding and alighting accidents.
  • (7) In the small hours of the previous morning, an attacker had forced open a shutter, broken a window and set the inside alight .
  • (8) "I could be an MP…" And it suddenly occurs to me that Gardiner might just have alighted on the perfect profession for his skills.
  • (9) In a running confrontation, both sides threw molotov cocktails, one of which set alight a makeshift barricade in the foyer.
  • (10) Didcot resident Steve Shadbolt told the Oxford Mail that he looked across at the power station and realised that one of the towers was alight: “It burnt so fiercely that it spread to the next one ... it was quite a blaze.” The energy secretary, Ed Davey, said: “First, I want to thank the emergency services who are at Didcot working to tackle the blaze.
  • (11) Some of these new converts have alighted upon the basic income as an answer to our fragmenting welfare state.
  • (12) Cars were set alight and there were unconfirmed reports of petrol bombs being thrown.
  • (13) Falun Gong groups overseas dispute that - and in 2011 a man set himself alight near the site of the car crash.
  • (14) Tens of thousands of hectares of forest have been alight for more than two months as a result of slash and burn – the fastest and quickest way to clear land for new plantations.
  • (15) Photograph: Guim “The men shouted as they walked through the station having alighted from the train a short time earlier.
  • (16) Brotherhood spokesmen denied responsibility for the fires, but the local people everywhere say that it was groups of Brothers who attacked the buildings and set them alight.
  • (17) The young Somali woman who set herself alight on Nauru – the second refugee in a week to do so – has been taken to Australia by air ambulance, but her situation remains critical.
  • (18) On Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel, the conservative commentator Sean Hannity recently alighted upon the case of Gordon Cook, a security manager from Merseyside, who used superglue to stick a loose crown into his gum because he was unable to find an NHS dentist.
  • (19) (" Setting a children's hospital alight is hitting the all time low.
  • (20) Bales acknowledged setting the bodies alight with a kerosene lantern.

Words possibly related to "ablaze"