darkness

UK/ˈdɑːk.nəs/US/ˈdɑɹk.nɪs/

nounB12 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #1,675 of 15,258leans spoken

Darkness is the state of having no light at all. The moment after the switch goes off, before your eyes adjust.

It works as a plain physical description, as in total darkness, and as a mood, since darkness in a story means despair or evil. Religion and myth use it constantly as the opposite of light. English has some fixed phrases: after dark, in the dark meaning uninformed, and the darkest hour being just before dawn. The adjective is dark and the verb is darken.

Definitions of darkness

1noundarknessThe absence of light.B1~57%
“They waited in total darkness.”
2nounevilEvil or despair.B2~43%
“The book is about the darkness in ordinary people.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 7 sentences found in the wild and placed 7 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Where it comes from

Old English
deorcnes
Middle English
derknesse
English, today
darkness

From Middle English derknesse, from Old English deorcnes; equivalent to dark + ness.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 2 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

darkness in the wild

Conrad draws parallels between London ("the greatest town on earth") and Africa as places of darkness.
Heart of Darkness
Absence of light refers to darkness, the physical condition of absence of light.
Absence of light (disambiguation)
Pairings operate, too, among supporting characters, such as that between the elf-queen Galadriel and the giant spider Shelob, light opposing darkness.
Character pairing in The Lord of the Rings
A shadow is a region of darkness where light is blocked.
Shadow (disambiguation)
Designed to be as quiet as possible, it was intended to observe troop movements in near-silence during the hours of darkness.
Lockheed YO-3 Quiet Star

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

Definitions of darkness

1noundarknessThe absence of light.B1~57%

“They waited in total darkness.”

2nounevilEvil or despair.B2~43%

“The book is about the darkness in ordinary people.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 7 sentences found in the wild and placed 7 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.