A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1190 entries
dimpsy
Dimpsy is twilight in the English West Country, particularly Devon and Somerset, and it is used as an adjective more than a noun: It is getting a bit dimpsy. It names the quality of the light at dusk rather than the hour, so the word describes what you can and cannot see rather than what the clock says.
Etymology
The word is built on dim, which is Old English and has meant the same thing for well over a thousand years, with an ending that turns it into a description of a state. Somerset also has dumps as the noun for twilight and dumpsy as the adjective, recorded in a dialect glossary in 1873, and dimpsy and dumpsy appear to be the same word with the vowel shifted.
Notes
English is unusually rich in words for this particular hour, which suggests it mattered to people who worked outside. Cockshut is the old general term and comes from the time of evening a net was set for woodcock. Orkney has the grimlings. The West Country also calls the moon the parish lantern.