Word of the Day

: January 18, 2011

gloaming

noun GLOH-ming

What It Means

: twilight, dusk

gloaming in Context

Crickets were chirping in the gloaming as the newlyweds walked home holding hands.

"Nighttime, not the late hours but the gloaming, when the sun was setting and dinner must be prepared and the long evening stretched out before her -- that's when the loneliness settled in like the ache in her hip on a rainy day, when the regrets, the bad memories, sometimes came to call." -- From Lisa Unger's 2010 novel Fragile

Did You Know?

If "gloaming" makes you think of tartans and bagpipes, well lads and lasses, you've got a good ear and a good eye; we picked up "gloaming" from the Scottish dialects of English back in the Middle Ages. The roots of the word trace to the Old English word for twilight, "glōm," which is akin to "glōwan," an Old English verb meaning "to glow." In the early 1800s, English speakers looked to Scotland again and borrowed the now-archaic verb "gloam," meaning "to become twilight" or "to grow dark."