A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1469 entries
gloaming
The gloaming is evening twilight, the fading light after sunset. The word is Scots and northern English by long habit, and it carries a settled, unhurried quality that dusk does not, which is why it survived in poetry and song after it had faded from ordinary English speech.
Etymology
The word is Old English, built on the same root as glow, so the gloaming is the glowing time rather than the darkening one. That is worth noticing, because most English words for this hour are built on words for dark: dusk from an old word for dim, twilight from two, meaning the light that is half. Gloaming is named for what is still there.