lucid

[loo-sid] /ˈlu sɪd/

adjective

easily understood; completely intelligible or comprehensible:

a lucid explanation.

characterized by clear perception or understanding; rational or sane:

a lucid moment in his madness.

shining or bright.

clear; pellucid; transparent.

Origin

1575-85; < Latin lūcidus, equivalent to lūc-, stem of lūx light¹ + -idus -id⁴

Related forms

lucidity, lucidness, noun

lucidly, adverb

nonlucid, adjective

nonlucidly, adverb

nonlucidness, noun

unlucid, adjective

unlucidly, adverb

unlucidness, noun

Synonyms

1. plain, understandable, evident, obvious. 2. sound, reasonable. 3. radiant, luminous. 4. limpid.

Antonyms

1, 4. obscure. 2. irrational. 3. dim.

Examples from the web for lucid

The moonlight, which seems so lucid and brilliant when you look up, is all pearl and smoke round the pond and the hills.
Although the grant has been renewed, the best efforts of the few lucid participants have met only cold rebuke.
It's taken years, and in her more lucid moments, she's not even there yet.
Every successive crisis finds him as understanding of others as he is lucid about himself, and his impulse is truly magnanimous.
They are lucid, they get all their laughs, but the price of their cultivation is an unfortunate absence of urgency.
In a private, lucid moment, he might have conceded this disproportion.
It's a bit jarring to see a lucid pro-transparency, pro-security argument from a federal prosecutor.
He insisted he was perfectly alert and lucid, adding that he was not a publicity hound, either.
These serve as a lucid introduction to the theory and practice of development.
lucid prose and vivid examples make the book admirably accessible to non-specialists.

British Dictionary definitions for lucid

lucid

/ˈluːsɪd/

adjective

readily understood; clear

shining or glowing

(psychiatry) of or relating to a period of normality between periods of insane or irresponsible behaviour

Derived Forms

lucidity, lucidness, noun
lucidly, adverb

Word Origin

C16: from Latin lūcidus full of light, from lūx light

Word Origin and History for lucid

adj.

1590s, "bright, shining," from Latin lucidus "light, bright, clear," figuratively "perspicuous, lucid, clear," from lucere "to shine," from lux (genitive lucis) "light," from PIE root *leuk- "to shine, be bright" (see light (n.)). Sense of "easy to understand" first recorded 1786. Lucid interval "period of calm or temporary sanity" (1580s) is from Medieval Latin lucida intervalla (plural), which was common in medieval English legal documents (cf. non est compos mentis, sed gaudet lucidis intervallis). Related: Lucidly; lucidness (1640s).

lucid in Technology

1. Early query language, ca. 1965, System Development Corp, Santa Monica, CA. [Sammet 1969, p.701].
2. A family of dataflow languages descended from ISWIM, lazy but first-order.
Ashcroft & Wadge , 1981.
They use a dynamic demand driven model. Statements are regarded as equations defining a network of processors and communication lines, through which the data flows. Every data object is thought of as an infinite stream of simple values, every function as a filter. Lucid has no data constructors such as arrays or records. Iteration is simulated with 'is current' and 'fby' (concatenation of sequences). Higher-order functions are implemented using pure dataflow and no closures or heaps.
["Lucid: The Dataflow Language" by Bill Wadge wwadge@csr.UVic.CA and Ed Ashcroft, c. 1985]. ["Lucid, the Dataflow Programming Language", W. Wadge, Academic Press 1985].
(1995-02-16)