Word.ws English Dictionary

gloam

gloam is the clipping of gloaming.

Verb

gloam (third-person singular simple present gloams, present participle gloaming, simple past and past participle gloamed)

  1. (intransitive) To begin to grow dark; to grow dusky.
  2. (intransitive) To be sullen or morose.

Meaning of gloaming

Noun

gloaming (plural gloamings)

  1. Twilight, as at early morning (dawn) or (especially) early evening; dusk.
    • Where in purple hue, the hieland hills we view / And the moon coming out in the gloaming.c. 1841, anonymous author, “The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond”, in Vocal Melodies of Scotland, verse 2
  2. (obsolete) Sullenness; melancholy.

Forms of gloam

Noun
pluralgloams
Verb
third-person singular presentgloams
present participlegloaming
past participlegloamed
pastgloamed

Origin of gloam

Back-formation from gloaming.

Questions about gloam

What does gloam mean?
Gloam means to begin to grow dark; to grow dusky.
What is gloam the clipping of?
Gloam is the clipping of gloaming.
What part of speech is gloam?
Gloam is a verb.
What is the past tense of gloam?
The past tense of gloam is gloamed.

Words near gloam in the dictionary

  1. GLO
  2. Glo.
  3. Gloag
  4. gloak
  5. gloaks
  6. gloam
  7. gloamed
  8. gloaming
  9. gloamings
  10. gloams
  11. gloar

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gloam (page history and authors); gloaming (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “gloam.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gloam. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.