dark
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: därk
ipa: /dɑːk/
enpr: därk
ipa: /dɑɹk/
homophone: doc
homophone: dock (non-rhotic, father-bother merger)
rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)k
Forms: form: darks
Etymology: From Middle English derk, derke, dirke, dyrke, from the adjective (see above), or possibly from an unrecorded Old English *dierce, *diercu (“dark, darkness”).
Senses: examples: text: Dark surrounds us completely.
text: Here stood he in the dark, his sharp sword out.
ref: 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 II, scene i]:
text: The face which emerged was not reassuring. It was blunt and grey, the nose springing thick and flat from high on the frontal bone of the forehead, whilst his eyes were narrow slits of dark in a tight bandage of tissue.[…].
ref: 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 17, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
text: [Rural solar plant] schemes are of little help to industry or other heavy users of electricity. Nor is solar power yet as cheap as the grid. For all that, the rapid arrival of electric light to Indian villages is long overdue. When the national grid suffers its next huge outage, as it did in July 2012 when hundreds of millions were left in the dark, look for specks of light in the villages.
ref: 2013 July 20, “Out of the gloom”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845:
glosses: A complete or (more often) partial absence of light.
examples: text: We kept him in the dark.
text: The lawyer was left in the dark as to why the jury was dismissed.
text: Look, what you do, you do it still i' th' dark.
ref: c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Loues Labour’s Lost”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii]:
text: Till we perceive it by our own understandings, we are as much in the dark, and as void of knowledge, as before.
ref: a. 1705, John Locke, “Of the Conduct of the Understanding”, in Posthumous Works of Mr. John Locke: […], London: […] A[wnsham] and J[ohn] Churchill, […], published 1706, →OCLC:
glosses: Ignorance.
examples: text: It was after dark before we got to playing baseball.
glosses: Nightfall.
examples: text: The lights may serve for a repose to the darks, and the darks to the lights.
ref: 1695, C[harles] A[lphonse] du Fresnoy, translated by John Dryden, De Arte Graphica. The Art of Painting, […], London: […] J[ohn] Heptinstall for W. Rogers, […], →OCLC:
glosses: A dark shade or dark passage in a painting, engraving, etc.
Synonyms: sense: absence of light
word: darkness
sense: ignorance
word: cluelessness
sense: ignorance
word: knowledgelessness
sense: ignorance
word: unawareness
sense: nightfall
word: crepusculum
word: evenfall
word: mirkning
word: dusk
Derived terms: after dark
all cats are gray in the dark
alone in the dark
at dark
before dark
glow-in-the-dark
in the dark
leap in the dark
murder in the dark
oh dark thirty
shot in the dark
whistle in the dark