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Imagine a streetlight in the middle of the night during a heavy fog, and the way that the fog would partially obscure or cause the glow/color emanating from the light to distort.
Is there a word for that?
"A heavy fog rolled into the night, the color from the streetlights [word-ing] with the backdrop of the night sky."
Light diffuses in heavy fog, because:
The action of individual [small] spheres [of water] on incident light is given in the theory of the rainbow.
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Containing Papers of a Mathematical and Physical Character Vol. 96, No. 677 (Nov. 1, 1919), pp. 267-272 (free to read online).
A heavy fog rolled into the night, the color from the streetlights melting into the backdrop of the night sky.
Longman gives:
melt into something [phrasal verb]
1 to gradually change into something else: Her irritation melted into pity.
2 to gradually become hidden by something [by merging / coalescing with it]: He is trying to melt into the background.
They are diffused by the fog and would appear to be "glowing."
They would appear glowing against the … (provided just before your edited question.)
Another thing you notice is the yellowing of the light to appear slightly warmer than would appear in clear cool air. Heavy fog is quite dense but not homogeneous.
"A heavy fog rolled into the night, the color from the streetlights [warm-ing] with the backdrop of the night sky."
also: [dimming] [fading] [winking]
(I grew up on the coast of Maine, USA)
miasma Merriam Webster
a thick or heavy vaporous atmosphere or emanation
As in:
"A heavy fog rolled into the night, engulfing the streetlights and night sky in a foreboding miasma."
Another verb which works is meld.
"A heavy fog rolled into the night, the color from the streetlights melding into the backdrop of the night sky."
Collins:
2. intransitive verb
If several things meld into another thing, or if they are melded into another thing, they combine and become the other thing.
[formal]
The white smoke and cannon's glare melded into a smear of horror before his eyes.
COBUILD Advanced English Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers
Blend
1.3 Merge (a colour) with another so that one is not clearly distinguishable from the other. ‘blend and smudge the darker colours under the bottom lashes’
Oxford Living Dictionaries
- (intr) (esp of colours) to shade imperceptibly into each other
Collins English Dictionary
"A heavy fog rolled into the night, the color from the streetlights blending into/with the backdrop of the night sky."
