Noun

(en noun)

(archaic) Lightning; a bolt of lightning; also, a bright flame or light.

* {{quote-book

, year= c1280 , year_published= 1868 , author= Anonymous , by= , title= , url= http://books.google.com/books?id=4XvmHG8pwpcC&pg=PA76 , original= , chapter= Godrich Displays Great Prowess , section= line 2690 , isbn= , edition= , publisher= N. Trübner & Company , location= London , editor= , volume= , page= 76 , passage= And forth rith al so leuin fares. }}

*1590 , (Edmund Spenser), The Faerie Queene , III.5:

*:neither blood in face nor life in hart / It left, but both did quite drye up and blast; / As piercing levin , which the inner part / Of every thing consumes, and calcineth by art.

* {{quote-book

, year= 1847 , year_published= 1848 , author= , by= , title= , url= http://books.google.com/books?id=-JF64q20JJgC&pg=PR9 , original= , chapter= , section= , isbn= , edition= , publisher= , location= Leipzig , editor= Currer Bell , volume= 1 , page= ix , passage= I cannot tell; but I think if some of those amongst whom he hurls the Greek fire of his sarcasm, and over whom he flashes the levin -brand of his denunciation, were to take his warnings in time — they or their seed might escape a fatal Ramoth-Gilead. }}

Noun

(obsolete) lightning

* Chaucer

Wild thunder dint and fiery leven .

(Webster 1913) ----