English

Alternative forms

• splendour (British)

Noun

splendor ‎(usually uncountable, plural splendors)

1. Great light, luster or brilliance.
   • Rudyard Kipling The Just So Stories; How the Rhinoceros got its skin:

     "Once upon a time on an uninhabited island on the shores of the Red Sea, there lived a Parsee from whose hat the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental-splendour."

2. Magnificent appearance, display or grandeur.
   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 1, in The China Governess:

     The original family who had begun to build a palace to rival Nonesuch had died out before they had put up little more than the gateway, so that the actual structure which had come down to posterity retained the secret magic of a promise rather than the overpowering splendour of a great architectural achievement.

   The splendor of the Queen's coronation was without comparison.‎

3. Great fame or glory.

Usage notes

Splendor is the standard spelling in American English, and splendour in modern British English

Translations

Latin

Etymology

From splendeō.

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈsplen.dor/, [ˈspɫɛn.dɔr]

Noun

splendor m ‎(genitive splendōris); third declension

1. sheen, brightness, brilliance, lustre, splendor
2. renown, fame

Inflection

Third declension.

Descendants

• English: splendor
• French: splendeur

References

• splendor in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• splendor in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• Meissner, Carl; Auden, Henry William (1894) Latin Phrase-Book, London: Macmillan and Co.
  • to sully one's fair fame: vitae splendori(em) maculas(is) aspergere
    

Old French

Etymology

Borrowing from Latin splendor.

Alternative forms

• esplendor
• esplendur
• splandor
• splendur

Noun

splendor f ‎(oblique plural splendors, nominative singular splendor, nominative plural splendors)

1. splendor (brilliant brightness)

Descendants

• English: splendor, splendour (borrowed)
• French: splendeur

References

• (fr) Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IX^e au XV^e siècle (1881) (splendor)