A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1469 entries
murk
Murk is darkness or gloom, and in practical use it names reduced visibility from any cause: fog, smoke, dust, failing light, or water thick with sediment. Divers and anglers use it for turbid water where you cannot see your own hand. It carries a sense of thickness that plain darkness does not, as though the air or the water had something in it.
Etymology
The word is Old English and came in from Norse, where it meant dark, and it has relatives across the northern Germanic languages. It survived in northern English and Scots after fading in the south and came back into general use largely through the adjective. The Norwegian and Danish word for darkness is the same word, essentially unchanged in a thousand years.