How to Use alight on/upon in a Sentence

alight on/upon

phrasal verb
  • Birds can flap their wings to swoop, dive, glide, and alight on perches.
    Adam Hadhazy, Discover Magazine, 8 Feb. 2013
  • Flocks of white pelicans alight on sandbars where the current ends.
    Zak Podmore, The Salt Lake Tribune, 3 May 2022
  • Toward the end of July, the goldfinches alight on the tall stalks of purple and yellow meadow rue, setting off ripples of movement.
    Nancy Hass Ngoc Minh Ngo, New York Times, 23 Sep. 2022
  • Canadian artist Cassils has been set alight on stage, wrestled a 2,000-pound block of clay in the pitch dark and trained as a bodybuilder on a cocktail of steroids, raw eggs and protein.
    Leah Dolan, CNN, 13 Oct. 2021
  • Moths alight on flat, two-dimensional leaves and petals, and vases sit in pools of shadow that don’t seem to affect the vibrancy of the arrangements above.
    oregonlive, 21 Sep. 2020
  • Millions of butterflies alight on oyamel firs, pines and junipers.
    Smithsonian Magazine, 21 Apr. 2021
  • Often, a pair of pigeons alight on nearby rooftops, their cooing a gentle nudge that a larger world still exists beyond our fraught lives.
    Washington Post, 11 Dec. 2020
  • To simply point out that Trump had improbably managed to alight on the correct course of action was to have written a favorable profile of Osama bin Laden.
    WSJ, 15 Feb. 2021
  • The most striking visual element is the floor-to-ceiling wood-burning fireplace, which offers a cozy spot to watch the snowflakes alight on the composite deck through a slider and windows that reach the ceiling.
    John R. Ellement, BostonGlobe.com, 28 Dec. 2022
  • After a nine-day Atlantic crossing and a period of display in New York, this bronze original, one-sixteenth the size of her sister, will alight on the front lawn of the ambassador’s residence.
    New York Times, 18 June 2021
  • This species’ pitcher has a rigid, horizontal lid with an exposed underside that secretes nectar, luring insects to alight on it.
    Darren Incorvaia, Scientific American, 3 Oct. 2022
  • In another, pleated-paper fans resembling butterflies alight on a floral sofa.
    Julie Belcove, Robb Report, 29 Oct. 2022
  • As industry mavens alight on the Zurich Film Festival, escalating inflation costs and rising interest rates are hijacking dreams of a post-pandemic recovery and rebirth.
    Angus Finney, Variety, 19 Sep. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'alight on/upon.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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