dusk

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dʌsk/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌsk

From Middle English dosk, dusk(e) (“dusky”, adj.), from Old English dox (“dark, swarthy”), from Proto-Germanic *duskaz (“dark, smoky”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰwes-, related to *dʰewh₂- (“smoke, mist, haze”). Cognate to Latin fuscus (“dark, dusky”), Sanskrit धूसर (dhūsara, “dust-colored”), Old Irish donn (“dark”). Related to dye, dust and dun (see these for more).

dusk (comparative dusker, superlative duskest)

1. Tending to darkness or blackness; moderately dark or black; dusky.
   • 1671, John Milton, “The First Book”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J. M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC:

     A pathless desert, dusk with horrid shades.

dusk (countable and uncountable, plural dusks)

1. The time after the sun has set but when the sky is still lit by sunlight; the evening twilight period.
2. A darkish colour.
   • 1700, [John] Dryden, “Palamon and Arcite”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:

     Whose dusk set off the whiteness of the skin.

3. The condition of being dusky; duskiness

• (period of time): evenfall, nightfall, smokefall, vespers; see also Thesaurus:dusk

• (antonym(s) of “period of time”): dawn, daybreak; see also Thesaurus:dawn

• (period of time): twilight; see also Thesaurus:twilight

• astronomical dusk
• civil dusk
• nautical dusk

• (times of day) time of day; dawn, morning, noon/midday, afternoon, dusk, evening, night, midnight ^{(Category: en:Times of day)}

From Middle English dusken, from Old English doxian.

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.
   • 1936, 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.
   • 1601, C[aius] Plinius Secundus [i.e., Pliny the Elder], “(please specify |book=I to XXXVII)”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Historie of the World. Commonly Called, The Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secundus. […], (please specify |tome=1 or 2), London: […] Adam Islip, published 1635, →OCLC:

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

• “dusk”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

• skud

dusk

1. Alternative form of dosk