dusk

Etymology

From Middle English dosk, duske (“dusky”, adj.), from Old English dox (“dark, swarthy”), from Proto-Germanic *duskaz (“dark, smoky”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰūs- (compare Old Irish donn (“dark”), Latin fuscus (“dark, dusky”), Sanskrit धूसर (dhūsara, “dust-colored”)), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰewh₂- (“smoke, mist, haze”). More at dye. Related to dust.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dʌsk/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌsk

Noun

dusk (plural dusks)

1. A period of time at the end of day when the sun is below the horizon but before the full onset of night, especially the darker part of twilight.
2. A darkish colour.
   • Dryden

     Whose dusk set off the whiteness of the skin.

Verb

dusk (third-person singular simple present dusks, present participle dusking, simple past and past participle dusked)

1. (intransitive) To begin to lose light or whiteness; to grow dusk.
   • Alfred Edward Housman, More Poems, XXXIII, lines 25-27

     I see the air benighted

     And all the dusking dales,

     And lamps in England lighted,

2. (transitive) To make dusk.
   • Holland

     After the sun is up, that shadow which dusketh the light of the moon must needs be under the earth.

Adjective

dusk (comparative dusker, superlative duskest)

1. Tending to darkness or blackness; moderately dark or black; dusky.
   • Milton

     A pathless desert, dusk with horrid shades.

See also

• dusk at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• skud