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
  • 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
  • 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

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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