|
124 wordies list
twilight |
(n): the time of day immediately following sunset
(n): clock time
(n): the diffused light from the sky when the sun is below the horizon but its rays are refracted by the atmosphere of the earth
(n): (physics) electromagnetic radiation that can produce a visual sensation
(n): a condition of decline following successes
(n): a condition inferior to an earlier condition; a gradual falling off from a better state
(adj): prenominal), twilit -- (lighted by or as if by twilight
(adj): vs. light) -- (devoid of or deficient in light or brightness; shadowed or black
|
Leave a comment, citation, or
private note on this word
sort comments:
|
first listed by:
appears in these lists:
|
Don't forget "twilight sleep" -- the semi-knockout concoction that patients often are given before/during minor surgery.
"O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?"
- Francis Scott Key, 'The Star-Spangled Banner', 1814.
astronomical twilight, civil twilight, naval twilight.
These poetic types never specify which definition of twilight they mean. Shockingly loose.
"A few hours later, during dinner, which, naturally, was served in the dining-room, the lights would be turned on, even when it was still quite light out of doors, so that one saw before one's eyes, in the garden, among summerhouses glimmering in the twilight like pale spectres of evening, arbours whose glaucous verdure was pierced by the last rays of the setting sun and which, from the lamp-lit room in which one was dining, appeared through the glass no longer—as one would have said of the ladies drinking tea in the afternoon along the blue and gold corridor—caught in a glittering and dripping net, but like the vegetation of a pale and green aquarium of gigantic size lit by a supernatural light."
-- Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, Revised by D.J. Enright, p 536 of the Modern Library paperback edition
I wrote a LOOONG paper on the history of this word last semester. It's a Middle English word.
"The visions dancing in my mind
The early dawn, the shades of time
Twilight crawling through my window pane
Am I awake or do I dream?
The strangest pictures I have seen
Night is day and twilight's gone away"