A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
975 entries
alpenglow
Strictly, the reddish light on a mountain after the sun has set or before it has risen — light arriving indirectly, bounced off haze, dust, and ice crystals low in the atmosphere, which is why it throws no hard shadow and seems to come from nowhere in particular. In common use, and among most photographers, the word also covers the pink light on a summit in the last direct minutes of the day, which is a different physical event with sharp-edged shadows.
Etymology
A calque of German Alpenglühen, Alps-glowing, in English from about 1871, with the native glow swapped in for glühen. Italian has a word from a different language altogether: enrosadira, from Ladin, spoken in five valleys of the Dolomites. Ladin also supplies the explanation, in the story of King Laurin, the dwarf king whose rose garden on the Rosengarten massif was cursed to be invisible by day and by night — so it burns at dusk, which belongs to neither.
Notes
Alpenglow is strongest on snow, which contributes no color of its own. Volcanic aerosol intensifies it and pushes it toward purple. The photographers who made the word ordinary in American English were mostly working in the Sierra and the Alaska Range.