Definition

Ethereal refers to something that is delicate, light, and almost otherworldly in its beauty or quality.

Pronunciation

US English

UK English


See Synonyms, Antonyms and Usage

Excerpts from News Articles

1

Our experience of ourselves and other people is essentially an act of imagination that can’t be sustained through wholly rational modes of thought. We see the light of consciousness in another’s eyes and, irresistibly, imagine some ethereal self behind those eyes, humming with feelings and thoughts, when in fact there’s nothing but the dark and silent substance of the brain. We imagine something similar behind our own eyes.

Logo 2023-04-13 The Guardian

2

The story of podcasting over its two-decade life span has been one of pretty much unchecked growth. Podcasts have a low barrier for entry (anyone can put one out into the ether and become a star), are, theoretically at least, cheaper to make than other forms of entertainment and attract remarkably loyal returning listeners – a dream combination for potential investors, who in the mid-to-late 00s descended on the medium with suitcases of cash to spend. But podcasting might have become a victim of its own success: the last few years of the 2010s saw an enormous amount of capital flood into the industry, prompting fears of a podcast bubble.

Logo 2023-04-14 The Guardian

3

J Logan Carey, an illustrator, has a much smaller following on Mastodon than he did on Twitter, “but people seem to actually see the things I post on there whereas on Twitter I feel like everything gets algorithmically squashed unless you’re a brand or a celebrity”, he says. Brett Elliff, a systems engineer, says he has been “really loving” Mastodon after using it for a few months: “I only see what I want to follow, and there are actual conversations happening instead of people shouting into the ether .” And Tiffany Li, a technology attorney and law professor, says Mastodon’s small user base “means that there are fewer trolls and generally unpleasant people”.

Logo 2023-04-18 The Guardian

4

Siddal is much better known as the Pre-Raphaelites’ ethereal , enigmatic muse and Rossetti’s wife. With tumbling auburn hair and a pale, delicate face, she perfectly embodied the group’s aesthetic ideals.

Logo 2023-04-15 EURO News

5

Angelcore aims to capture the ethereal beauty and otherworldliness that we associate with European depictions of angels. But it's not limited to just one belief system or culture. Angelcore can feature a range of aesthetics from Greek paganism to Judaism to Christianity and beyond.

Logo 2023-04-16 EURO News

6

If these works draw specifically on sacred spaces and sound in an Islamic context, Muhannad Shono’s On Softer Light provides space for a broader reflection on the spiritual realm. The two-part installation of light, shone through almost painfully fine threads, creates an ethereal realm where the lines are blurred between light and dark, the physical and the spiritual.

Logo 2023-04-18 EURO News

7

Charif Shanahan: I believe that it is, though that “clarity” doesn’t come in the form one might expect or desire. Part of what compels me about lyric poetry, as a reader and maker, is its ability to touch and transmit that which cannot be said in language: the ineffable, the numinous, God, [Federico García] Lorca’s duende, universe, ether , spirit—whatever you call it. There is a mystery inside that encounter, when contact is made by our bodies and minds with this ineffable thing.

Logo 2023-04-10 Literary Hub

8

“Picnic at Hanging Rock also belongs on this list I think! The book is good too, but I don’t think any book can capture the ethereal vagueness of this story the way the movie does.” (Lamplight)

Logo 2023-04-12 Literary Hub

9

It shows the HMS Temeraire—famed for its heroic role in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805—being towed up the River Thames to a shipyard to be broken up. In depicting the modern steam-powered tug pulling the ethereal sailing ship to its fate, Turner testifies to the massive technological changes ushered in during his lifetime. The techniques and colours are typical of the later works that were to make him arguably the most revolutionary of landscape painters.


10

What I hadn’t registered — and what’s extraordinary about Gego’s oeuvre as a whole — is the sheer variety of her inventions, all dreamed up within strict, self-imposed parameters. She was a sculptor of extraordinary sophistication and subtlety. Her creations combine the playful vivacity of Alexander Calder and the woven robustness of Ruth Asawa and Janet Echelman with the optical intelligence of Bridget Riley and the ethereal delicacy of Lygia Pape.

Logo 2023-04-14 The Washington Post

11

The ethereal texture is created by a method that more resembles a sponge cake than the denser quick breads we tend to make in loaf pans. It starts by whipping cream. Then you beat together eggs and sugar until they’re voluminous and pale, a.k.a. reached the “ribbon phase.” Gradually beat in the oil, and fold in the flour, then the whipped cream. Take care not to knock out too much air, and you’ll be rewarded for your efforts.

Logo 2023-04-17 The Washington Post

12

Unless you had an explanation to help you process the experience, most people will struggle to grasp what happened to them. But now research is showing this ethereal experience is something we can understand, using scientific models of the mind, the body, and the relationship between the two.

Logo 2023-04-06 The Conversation

13

Showing the work in such a historic site, where none of the display can leave so much as a fingerprint trace on the fabric of the building, presented the curation team with particular challenges and so in the first space reproductions dramatically tower above you on floating panels made from shojis, traditional translucent Japanese screens, the bonus being that you can see the photograph from both sides. In the other rooms the images are laid out to be viewed only in natural light as is dictated by the sacred traditions of the building’s heritage but this cleverly creates a subtle atmosphere that enhances the ethereal beauty of the photography.

Logo 2023-04-21 The Guardian

14

“He sat down at a piano and said: ‘Hey, let me play you this thing I wrote,’ and he sings this beautiful song and it just goes out into the air and into the ether and it’s gone. I was thinking: ‘Oh man, I’m working on a film and it’s gonna take me two years before I can even express what I’m trying to say.’”

Logo 2023-04-22 The Guardian

15

It makes sense that it’s all about balance. Too much – or too little – stress is bad for you yet common knowledge has not caught up with psychological science. For most of us, even the word stress is anathema, conjuring up feelings of being overwhelmed and on edge. Admitting to experiencing stress is associated with feelings of failure and inadequacy. We spend so much time worrying about the excessive demands that stress can place on us that we fail to capitalise on the benefits, which can seem ethereal and hard to grasp.

Logo 2023-04-23 The Guardian

16

However, their obsession with each other and this ethereal world distanced them from reality – eventually leading up to the horrific homicide.

Logo 2023-04-22 EURO News

17

The TikToks start with a drive through the flat plains of Central Texas to the memorial site, the ethereal background music and praying-hands emoji evoking a pilgrimage. Next up are plaques listing names of the dead, followed by a peek inside a makeshift museum with poster-size scenes of carnage on the walls. Moving back outside, the cameras linger on a square pit labeled “Vault where the mothers and children were gassed.” There’s often a testimonial at this point about how creepy the place is, how it’s hard to shake an eerie feeling.

Logo 2023-04-19 The Washington Post

18

He encounters an almost perversely helpful suburban couple named Roger and Grace (Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan), who insist that he stay in the bedroom of their angry teenage daughter (a superbly bristling Kylie Rogers); he crosses paths with an ethereal wood sprite (Hayley Squires), who turns out to be a member of a hilariously pseudo-experimental theater troupe; he revisits his boundary-challenged boyhood with his single mother, his first kiss with a headstrong girl (Julia Antonelli) and his grating suspicions about his father’s death.

Logo 2023-04-19 The Washington Post

19

Occurring usually high above clouds, the aurora, also known as the northern lights in the northern hemisphere, paints the atmosphere with ethereal scenes. Green, red and purple ribbons of light dance across the sky and instill wonder to those who are lucky enough to catch it usually near the polar regions. The aurora can sometimes be obscured to sky watchers on the ground by clouds, but astronauts on the International Space Station can have a front-row seat to aurora activity from above.

Logo 2023-04-20 The Washington Post

20

Where Roosevelt’s private-sector bugbears were the industrial-age charnel houses of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, Musk’s are much more ethereal : Namely, the alleged risk to civilization posed by the development of artificial intelligence.

Logo 2023-04-19 Politico

21

Bitcoin jumped 8% to {$}29,828.25, according to Coin Metrics. That helped lift ether , which advanced 6% to {$}1,957.02. Both crypto assets are still below the key levels of {$}30,000 and {$}2,000, respectively, that they traded at two weeks ago for the first time since last year.

Logo 2023-04-26 CNBC

22

Yet some of the feminist firebrands she extols in later chapters would have rejected these abstractions. Rich regarded motherhood as “a relationship between her body and the bodies she had birthed,” as Banks puts it, and Wollstonecraft, who died of postpartum complications, would no doubt have resented the reduction of a physical ordeal to an ethereal emblem.

Logo 2023-04-27 The Washington Post

23

As his army finished off the remaining enemy soldiers, Maximus looked up into the sky. He could see the gates to the Astral Sea opening, waiting to take him to the ethereal realm of the Godir. He could see victory.

Logo 2023-04-29 NPR

24

I called it shiitake pâté and we spread it on crostini, topped with pickles and cheese. It was earthy, bordering on ethereal . I had flavored it with classic pâté ingredients, thyme and brandy, but I immediately knew that the base could be taken in a lot of directions.

Logo 2023-04-30 The Washington Post

25

“Almost ethereal ,” Amarteifio said. “Because of the responsibility that they are able to take on.”

Logo 2023-05-05 The Washington Post

26

Music underpinned the entire celebration, in keeping with history. Each stage was marked by either a grand choral work, an ethereal motet, an extravagant organ composition or an evocative melody, all performed by some of the most accomplished singers and musicians in the world.

Logo 2023-05-06 CNN News

27

The exhibition will also include unconventional colour works by Italian master of fashion photography Gian Paolo Barbieri, large format Polaroids of ethereal women by the eclectic Italian Artist Toni Meneguzzo, and rare Polaroids of iconic ‘90s supermodels by British photographer Rankin.

Logo 2023-05-09 EURO News