gloaming

noun

gloam·​ing ˈglō-miŋ 

: twilight, dusk

Did you know?

If The Gloaming were a Stephen King thriller, the climax would undoubtedly take place at the crepuscular hour. But despite its ties to darkness, the origins of gloaming are less than shadowy. Originally used in Scottish dialects of English, the word traces back to the Old English glōm, meaning “twilight,” which shares an ancestor with the Old English glōwan, meaning “to glow.” In the early 1800s, English speakers looked to Scotland again and borrowed the now-archaic verb gloam, meaning “to become dusk” or “to grow dark.”

Synonyms

• black
• blackness
• candlelight
• dark
• darkness
• dusk
• gloom
• murk
• night
• semidarkness
• shade
• shadows
• twilight
• umbra

Examples of gloaming in a Sentence

lovers would often retreat to the gloaming of the park's many secluded recesses to steal a kiss

with the gloaming came the familiar call of the whip-poor-will

Recent Examples on the Web

Some of these convey important information; others emerged, devoid of any useful meaning, from the marketing gloaming. —Brian Barrett, WIRED, 10 Jan. 2018

So imagine everyone’s delight when Bennifer reemerged from the gloaming after Lopez split with fiance Alex Rodriguez. —Travis M. Andrews, Washington Post, 17 July 2022

The game down on the field seems to be played in the gloaming. —Scott Ostler, San Francisco Chronicle, 30 Jan. 2022

Tony Kemp hit an eighth-inning, two-run homer in the gloaming at the Oakland Coliseum Sunday to give the A’s a 3-1 win over the Yankees in a game that might wind up being the biggest win of the season for the A’s. —Scott Ostler, San Francisco Chronicle, 29 Aug. 2021

The bar shares an appetizer menu with the restaurant; in the gloaming, the seafood towers sparkle. —The New Yorker, 6 Aug. 2021

Queens in the gloaming, the sky a smear of pinks and purples. —Dan Piepenbring, The New Yorker, 25 Nov. 2020

There were sourdough waffles to start the day and tuna sandwiches for lunch, a few hours of everyone reading novels in separate corners before a long solitary walk in the gloaming, accompanied by gloved waves across generally empty streets. —Sam Sifton, New York Times, 30 Mar. 2020

Ivanka Trump tweeted the hashtag #TogetherApart with a photo — apparently years-old — of herself playing with her children in some kind of indoor fort, in the gloaming of some plush parlor. —Dan Zak, Washington Post, 23 Mar. 2020

Word History

Etymology

Middle English (Scots) gloming, from Old English glōming, from glōm twilight; akin to Old English glōwan to glow

First Known Use

before the 12th century, in the meaning defined above

Phrases Containing gloaming

• the gloaming

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Kids Definition

gloaming

noun

gloam·​ing ˈglō-miŋ 

: twilight, dusk