gloaming

gloa•ming (GLOH-ming)  n

Definition:
twilight; dusk
Origin:
before 1000; from O.E. glomung "twilight," formed from glom "twilight," related to glowan "to glow", from P.Gmc. *glo-, ultimately from the Indo-European root ghel- "to shine"

Related:
Synonyms: evening, dusk, eventide, nightfall, sundown, sunset, twilight

Sentence Examples:
• As far as it went, we found it a fine, interesting, but unfinished Gothic building of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Little beyond the choir exists—a splendid fragment, but a fragment only. It might have been one of the world's wonders. We entered for the second time in the gloaming, when its great height was lost in shadows.  -Glories of Spain, by Charles W. Wood

• It is nearly three years now since "Old Friend Death" took him gently by the hand and led him away to that far, far country of which he had such vague ideas, so he tells no more stories by the firelight in the gloaming; and his little masters--children no longer--are claimed by graver tasks and wider interests. -Outa Karel's Stories, Sanni Metelerkamp

• Year after year, Thornton Fairchild had sat in the big armchair by the windows, watching the days grow old and fade into night, studying sunset after sunset, voicing the vain hope that the gloaming might bring the twilight of his own existence,—a silent man except for this, rarely speaking of the past, never giving to the son who worked for him, cared for him, worshiped him, the slightest inkling of what might have happened in the dim days of the long ago to transform him into a beaten thing, longing for the final surcease.  -The Cross-Cut, Courtney Ryley Cooper

Sources: Wordsmith, Online Etymology

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