bright

/braIt/ adjective

1 LIGHT shining strongly or with plenty of light: bright sunlight | bright lights | a new, bright, fully air-conditioned office

2 INTELLIGENT intelligent and likely to be successful: Rosa's a bright child - she should do well at school. | (have) a bright idea: We've no money and the last bus has gone. Any bright ideas?

3 COLOURS bright colours are strong and easy to see: bright red | Wash bright colours separately.

4 CHEERFUL cheerful or full of life: a bright smile

(+ with): Her eyes were bright with excitement

5 as bright as a button clever and full of life

6 not too/very bright

a) if your future is not too bright, there is no reason to hope that good things will happen: The future doesn't look too bright for these youngsters on the dole.

b) informal not sensible: That wasn't very bright, was it?

7 look on the bright side to see the good points in something that is bad in other ways: Look on the bright side - not having a holiday will mean you save money!

8 bright and early very early in the morning: Max was up bright and early, keen to get started.

9 bright spark informal an intelligent person, often used jokingly about someone who has done something stupid: What bright spark forgot to turn the oven off?

10 bright and breezy cheerful and confident

11 have a bright future/have bright prospects to be likely to be successful in whatever you do as a job

12 bright-eyed and bushy-tailed humorous keen to start doing something, especially because it is new or interesting

13 the bright lights the interesting exciting life that people are supposed to have in big cities: June went off in search of the bright lights in London.

14 bright spot an event or a period of time that is more pleasant when everything else is unpleasant: The only bright spot of the weekend was our trip to the theatre.

- brightly adverb: The sun shone brightly. - brightness noun (U)