gloaming
Plural: gloamings
Noun
- The time of day when light is fading; twilight or dusk.
- the time of day immediately following sunset
- Twilight, as at early morning (dawn) or (especially) early evening; dusk.
- Sullenness; melancholy.
Verb
- present participle and gerund of gloam
Examples
- Many Scrabble duels extend into the gloaming, with players reluctant to end a tight game.
Origin / Etymology
From a dialectal variant of glooming, from Middle English *gloming, from Old English glōmung, from Old English glōm (“twilight”). By surface analysis, gloom + -ing. Related to glow.
The OED notes: "The vowel of the modern gloaming is anomalous, as Old English glōmung should normally become glooming. The explanation is probably that the ō was shortened in the compound ǣfen-glommung (as the spelling seems to show was actually the case), and that from this compound there was evolved a new subject glŏmung, which by normal phonetic development became Middle English glǭming, modern English gloaming."
Synonyms
crepuscle, crepuscule, dusk, evenfall, fall, gloam, nightfall, twilight, blue hour, crepusculum, dimmet, evenglome, gloaming, glooming, misery, sadness, sorrow, tweenlight, vespers, woe
Scrabble Score: 12
gloaming: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordgloaming: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
gloaming: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary