Know Your Next Word : empyrean
17. empyrean :
noun :
1. the highest heaven, supposed by the ancients to contain the pure element of fire
2. Heaven : paradise
usage :
She might have been an angel arguing a point in the empyrean if she hadn't been, so completely, a woman.
In the poem -- one he had the good sense finally to abandon -- he pictured himself as a blind moth raised among butterflies, which for a brief moment had found itself rising upward into the empyrean to behold "Great horizons and systems and shores all along," only to find its wings crumpling and itself falling -- like Icarus -- back to earth.
In my experience, the excitement generated by a truly fresh and original piece of writing is the rocket fuel that lifts Grub Street's rackety skylab -- with its grizzled crew of editors, publishers, agents, booksellers, publicists -- into orbit in the empyrean.
well-meaning ineptitude that rises to empyreal absurdity
empyreal radiance.
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