wondered what might be lurking in the lightless corners of the basement
Recent Examples on the WebWhile rappelling into some supposedly haunted mines in Chile in 2010, Gates and a cameraman got trapped in a lightless mine shaft.—Vulture, 5 Jan. 2024 Animals that live exclusively in lightless caves often share a suite of traits, called troglomorphisms, which include loss of pigmentation and loss not only of vision but of the eyes entirely.—Gemma Tarlach, Discover Magazine, 11 Oct. 2018 The boy grows up in the lightless void before managing to escape.—Noah Berlatsky, Los Angeles Times, 9 Dec. 2022 At night, lightless streets turn into treacherous obstacle courses, especially after snow and rain.—Michael Birnbaum, Washington Post, 23 Nov. 2022 Tracking swarms of flea-size organisms through the lightless depths is trickier than following migrating whales across hemispheres.—Katherine Harmon Courage, Scientific American, 1 Aug. 2022 After the humans arrived, Fred stayed in his lightless bog for millennia as the land was worked above, the forests shaped by fire and the fields sowed with corn, beans, and squash.—Peter Brannen, The Atlantic, 22 June 2022 Who knew that wriggling through underwater crevices could be pleasurable, that floating in lightless pockets of rock could be Zen?—Joe Morgenstern, WSJ, 7 Oct. 2021 Toward the end of those years, the Viking and his closest lieutenants were cast into a lightless dungeon, yet nonetheless managed to break out, kidnap the emperor’s mistress and commandeer two galleys.—Washington Post, 22 Sep. 2021
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'lightless.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
First Known Use
before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1
Time Traveler
The first known use of lightless was
before the 12th century
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