What do Americans call a tubelight?

Question

A tubelight is a layman's term for a fluorescent tube lamp in South Asia. Will an American reader understand that this is what I am talking about if I state, "the store was lit by a single flickering tubelight"?

Answer 1

AHD finds no instance neither of tubelight nor of tube light.

More generally, it is called a fluorescent light. I first thought of neon lights but this American site called homesteady explains it well:

Fluorescent lights are similar to neon devices. Like neon lights, a very carefully controlled electrical current enters the light and arcs from one end of the bulb to the other, passing through a gas on its way. However, the gas used in fluorescent lights has no neon.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines fluorescent as

Exhibiting or produced by fluorescence:

• fluorescent corals; fluorescent light.

Cambridge gives the American definition of the object:

fluorescent light | AMERICAN DICTIONARY

noun [ C ] US/ˌflʊˈres·ənt ˈlɑɪt, ˌflɔ-, ˌfloʊ-/

a very bright, usually tube-shaped electric light used esp. in offices

Ngram finds that in American English, fluorescent light is prefered to tubelight or tube light, and even to neon light.

If you want to be really specific (fluorescent lights can be tubes or lights or lamps), the term fluorescent tube (light) is definitely used. Wikipedia starts its article on Fluorescent Lamp by stating:

"Tubelight" redirects here. For other uses, see Tubelight (disambiguation).

and then goes on

A fluorescent lamp, or fluorescent tube, is a low-pressure mercury-vapor gas-discharge lamp that uses fluorescence to produce visible light. An electric current in the gas excites mercury vapor, which produces short-wave ultraviolet light that then causes a phosphor coating on the inside of the lamp to glow.