Thursday, July 12, 2018

Twilight

Twilight

There’s a magic to twilight — that time between day & night. I hope you’ll see a little magic in twilight’s roots.

The word twilight appeared in English in the 1300s, a combination of the prefix twi- & the word light. Twi- meant two times (we see its cousin in the word twice). It would be reasonable to assume that, because twilight can refer not only to the time between day & night, but also the time between night & day, that twilight translates to twice-light, but research suggests that twilight originally meant something closer to half-light. Twilight’s Sanskrit relative is defined to mean a junction or holding together — as though this half-light time somehow cements together moments that might otherwise fly apart, which might explain the old belief that twilight offers an opening between this world & the next.

In the 1500s, the word crepusculine appeared, later to become our modern word, crepuscular. No one is certain which of crepuscular’s meanings came first: dusk, or obscure. Interestingly, the word’s Italian root is of uncertain origin — how perfect — a word meaning obscure has an obscure origin.

An Old English word meaning the absence of light gave us the word dusk sometime around the year 1200. Originally, dusk was more of a color word than a-time-of-day word, but by the 1600s it began to refer that time we call twilight.

About that same time dusk was born, the noun dawn was born, meaning first appearance of daylight in the morning. This noun came from the much older verb dauen (to become day), which, oddly, seems to have come from an even older noun, dauing (the period between darkness & sunrise)

And the now-poetic term the gloaming, meaning twilight, was at one point just your basic Old English word referring to a time of day. Its root is the word glow & its ending appears to have been modeled after the word evening.

May your twilights glow sweetly.


Anything to say about all this? Let me know in the comments section.




8 comments:

  1. I love the word crepuscular. All these twilight words seem to be a little obscure and enigmatic, don't they?

    Gloaming is a fun word too. There's an old Victorian song called "In the Gloaming" that we had piano sheet music for when I was a kid. I had no idea what a gloaming was, so I imagined it as kind of hidden wooded dell where lovers might meet. I think there were sobbing trees somewhere in the lyrics. All terribly tragical.

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    1. Anne -- I love your sobbing trees -- overly zealous weeping willows, perhaps? And I, too, am a fan of the word crepuscular -- it's simply a fun word to say. Thanks for coming by.

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  2. I love the word "gloaming!" Crepuscular, too. I've just never had the chance to use either. Perhaps by tomorrow's gloaming.

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    1. Perhaps when next we meet we can discuss crepuscularity & gloamacity while we're at it.

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  3. Twilight is a time of magic. And all of these words sound a bit romantic, I think. Except maybe Crepuscular. That one sounds a bit medical. And maybe icky.

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    1. Nothing like a little icky mixed in with romantic, eh? Thanks for coming by.

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  4. I always have difficulty reading your blog, Charlie. The font is just too small on my computer...

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    1. Hey Kevin -- Yikes -- haven't heard this before. It's a standard font & size (or so I thought when I set it up). I'll ask around & see whether anyone else is struggling with it. Thanks for letting me know.

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