darkling
English
editPronunciation
edit- IPA(key): /ˈdɑː(ɹ)klɪŋ/, (Etymology 3) /ˈdɑː(ɹ)k(ə)lɪŋ/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
- Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)klɪŋ
Etymology 1
editNoun
editdarkling (plural darklings)
Etymology 2
editFrom Middle English derkelyng, equivalent to dark + -ling.
Adverb
editdarkling (not comparable)
- In the dark; in obscurity.
- c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iv]:
- So, out went the candle, and we were left darkling.
- 1667, John Milton, “Book III”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:
- As the wakeful bird sings darkling.
- 1816, Lord Byron, Darkness:
- I had a dream, which was not all a dream. / The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars / Did wander darkling in the eternal space, / Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth / Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Etymology 3
editNoun
editdarkling (plural darklings)
Adjective
editdarkling (not comparable)
- (poetic) Dark; growing dark; darkening.
- 1867, Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach::
- And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night
- 1876, Heinrich Heine, translated by Thomas Selby Egan, Atta Troll and Other Poems, London: Chapman and Hall, […], page 165:
- The air is cool and it’s darkling, / And calmly flows the Rhine; / The mountain tops are sparkling / In sunset’s parting shrine.
- 1898, H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, page 140:
- To us and to an observer about Ripley it would have had precisely the same effect the Martians seemed in solitary possession of the darkling night, lit only as it was by the slender moon, the stars, the after-glow of the daylight[.]
- (figurative) Obscure; taking place unseen, as if in the dark.
Verb
editdarkling
- present participle and gerund of darkle
References
edit- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Massachusetts, G.&C. Merriam Co., 1967
Anagrams
editCategories:
- English 2-syllable words
- English 3-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- Rhymes:English/ɑː(ɹ)klɪŋ
- Rhymes:English/ɑː(ɹ)klɪŋ/2 syllables
- English terms suffixed with -ling (diminutive)
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- en:Fantasy
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms suffixed with -ling (adverbial)
- English adverbs
- English uncomparable adverbs
- English terms with quotations
- English terms suffixed with -ing (participial)
- English adjectives
- English uncomparable adjectives
- English poetic terms
- English non-lemma forms
- English verb forms
- English heteronyms