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daylight

UK/ˈdeɪlaɪt/US/ˈdeɪˌlaɪt/
nounA2Common in everyday speech and writing · #2,533 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: daylights

Daylight is the natural light of the day. In broad daylight, before daylight, daylight hours.

It is far brighter than any indoor lighting — tens of thousands of lux outdoors against a few hundred inside — which is why getting outside in the morning matters for the body clock. Daylight robbery means an outrageous price. Note the compound of day and light.

Definitions of daylight

  1. 1noundaylightThe natural light of the day.A2

    “Let's finish the hike while there's still daylight.”

daylight is light.

Where it comes from

Day plus light. The compound is recorded from Middle English and has never changed its meaning.

  1. Middle English

    daye-lighte

  2. English, today

    daylight

From Middle English daye-lighte, dey liȝht, dailiȝt, day-liht, dai-liht (also as days lyȝt, daies liht), equivalent to day + light. Cognate with stq Deegeslucht, Daisljoacht (“daylight”), West Frisian deiljocht (“daylight”), Dutch daglicht (“daylight”), German Tageslicht (“daylight”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

daylight in the wild

  • Japan does not observe daylight saving time, though its introduction has been debated on several occasions.

    Japan Standard Time

  • Areas in the Eastern Time Zone which do not observe daylight saving time use Eastern Standard Time, which is based on the 75th meridian west of Greenwich.

    Eastern Time Zone

  • Observation of daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday in March; at 2:00 a.m.

    Eastern Time Zone

  • Specifically, it is Mountain Standard Time (MST) when observing standard time, and Mountain Daylight Time (MDT) when observing daylight saving time.

    Mountain Time Zone

  • The Canadian province of British Columbia and Yukon Territory observe permanent daylight saving time in the Pacific Time Zone, which is equivalent to year-round Mountain Standard Time.

    Mountain Time Zone

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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.