Etymologically
Log in

dusk

This is the current revision of this entry, as edited by bogdan on 31 October 2026 at 14:15. This address is a permanent link to this version.
Changes in this edit History

Pronunciation

Etymology

The adjective is inherited from Middle English dosk, also dusk, deosc and dosc,[2][3] inherited from Old English dox (“dark-coloured, swarthy”), with the sounds k and s transposed.[2][4][5][6][7] The OED explains that the late West Saxon form dox is itself the transposed one, while the later forms continue the form without metathesis;[8] Weekley likewise takes dox as standing for *dosc.[9] Hoad finds the vowel of dusk (14th century) hard to account for and notes that the earlier dosk is a characteristically western form.[10] Etymonline is more doubtful: it calls the word of uncertain origin and gives the Old English source only as a possibility, quoting the OED's remark that few English words in -sk are of Old English origin.[11] Skeat took it as a northern or Scandinavian word.[12] The Old English adjective goes back to Proto-Germanic *duskaz (“dark”),[13][14][10] from Proto-Indo-European *dʰus-ko- (“dark-coloured”),[13][10][4] and is identical in form with Latin fuscus (“dark, dusky”),[13][14][8][15] though the OED allows that the two may be independent formations.[8] Related are furvus (“dark-coloured, swarthy”),[8][13][16] Old Saxon dosan (“chestnut brown”), Old High German tusin (“pale yellow”),[4][8][5][3] Swedish duska (“to be misty”)[11][16] and Sanskrit धूसर (dhūsara, “dust-coloured”),[1][16][3] as well as dun and, through fuscus, obfuscate.[10][5][15] The noun is the adjective used as a noun;[4][11][17] Dictionary.com instead calls it a back-formation from English dusky.[18]

Earliest recorded meaning

Dark or pale in colour: the Old English adjective appears in glosses, where Bosworth–Toller records it rendering Latin furvus and flavus.[19][8][4] The verb, to grow dark, is found in the Old English Vercelli Homilies.[8]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English the adjective also meant dim or shadowy, from about 1225,[8][2] though Etymonline notes that it had more to do with colour than with light.[11] A figurative sense, obscure or hard to understand, lasted from about 1225 to 1582.[8][5] The noun first meant darkness or dimness (1567), then the partial darkness of evening (1607),[8] the sense that Barnhart and Merriam-Webster date to 1622[4][3] and Ayto to the early 17th century;[15] by 1695 it named the time of evening itself.[8] A figurative noun, a period of decline or obscurity, is recorded from 1653.[8] Johnson (1755) defined the adjective as "tending to darkness" or dark-coloured, quoting Milton, and the noun as "tendency to darkness; incipient obscurity".[17] The older colour sense lives on in dusky, from the 16th century,[15] and the adjective and verb are now mainly poetic.[5][20] In Yorkshire, Leicestershire and Gloucestershire dialect, compounds such as dusk-hour and dusk o' t'evening meant twilight or late evening.[21]

Timeline

  • before 1000 – Old English dox, dark-coloured, in glosses.[4][8]
  • c. 1225 – dim, lacking light.[8]
  • c. 1225 – figuratively, obscure (obsolete after 1582).[8]
  • c. 1400 – transitive verb, to make dark or dim, in Chaucer's Boethius.[8]
  • 1567 – noun, darkness, dimness.[8]
  • 1607 – the partial darkness of evening.[8]
  • 1622 – noun, twilight, in Barnhart and Merriam-Webster.[4][3]
  • 1653 – figuratively, a period of decline.[8]
  • 1695 – the time of evening when most daylight has gone.[8]

Meanings

Noun

  1. The darker part of twilight, especially in the evening: The farmers walked home at dusk.[20][3][8]
  2. Partial darkness; shade or gloom: the dusk of the cellar.[3][8][20]
  3. A period of decline or obscurity.[8]

Adjective

  1. (poetic) Dark, dim or shadowy; dusky.[20][5][3]
  2. (obsolete, 1225–1582) Obscure, hard to perceive or understand.[8][5]

Verb

  1. (poetic) To grow dark or dim.[20][3][8]
  2. To make dark or dim.[3][8][20]

Word family

  • duskish
  • predusk
  • dusky
  • dun
  • obfuscate
  • fuscous

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  9. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  10. ^ a b c d Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  11. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  12. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  13. ^ a b c d Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  14. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  15. ^ a b c d Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  16. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  17. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  18. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  19. ^ Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
  20. ^ a b c d e f Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  21. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)