Twilight is the soft half-light between day and night. At twilight, the twilight hour, walking home in the twilight.
It happens twice a day, though the word almost always means the evening one; dawn covers the morning. Astronomers divide it into three stages — civil, nautical and astronomical twilight — by how far the sun is below the horizon. Figuratively, twilight means the closing period of something: the twilight of his career. Note twilight zone, meaning an ambiguous state, and twilight years, a gentle phrase for old age.
1nountwilightThe soft half-light between day and night.
“They walked back in the twilight without a torch.”
2nounclosingThe closing period of something.
“It was the twilight of a very long career.”
twilight is a time of half-light.
Also accepted in games: dusk
The twi- is the same as in twice and between — two-light, the light that belongs to neither day nor night. English built the word from its own materials and has kept it unchanged for six hundred years.
Proto-Indo-European
*lewk-
Middle English
twilight
English, today
twilight
From Middle English twilight, twyelyghte, equivalent to twi- + light, literally ‘second light, half-light’. Cognate to Scots twa licht, twylicht, twielicht (“twilight”), Low German twilecht, twelecht (“twilight”), Dutch tweelicht (“twilight, dusk”), {{cog|de|
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA