gloaming
UK/ˈɡləʊ.mɪŋ//ˈɡloʊ.mɪŋ/
gloaming noun: twilight, as at early morning (dawn) or (especially) early evening; dusk. Also the present participle and gerund of gloam.
Noun
gloaming (plural gloamings)
- 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
- You may imagine the young people brushed up after the labours of the day, and making this novelty, as they would make any novelty, the excuse for walking together and enjoying a trivial flirtation. You may figure to yourself the hum of voices along the road in the gloaming[…]1898, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter 6, in The War of the Worlds, book 1
- Synonyms:
- crepuscule, glooming, vespers, blue hour, crepusculum, dimmet, evenglome, tweenlight, twilight
- Sullenness; melancholy.
Also used as
gloaming is also the present participle and gerund of gloam.
gloaming meaning in Vietnamese
gloaming in Vietnamese
- twilight
- hoàng hôn
Examples of gloaming in a sentence
- I clung to her nipples as she soared and swooped through the gloaming, scooping up insects, and I remember the shapes of things that she flew between, above, beneath.2001, David Lodge, Thinks ...:
- Your alarm bells, your alarm / They should be ringing, they should be ringing / This is the gloaming2003, “The Gloaming”, in Hail to the Thief, performed by Radiohead:
Synonyms of gloaming
3 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Antonyms
Forms of gloaming
| plural | gloamings |
|---|
Origin of gloaming
From Middle English gloming, from Old English glōmung, from Old English glōm (“twilight”). Related to glow. The OED notes: "The vowel of the modern gloaming is anomalous, as Old English glōmung should normally become glooming. The explanation is probably that the ō was shortened in the compound ǣfen-glommung (as the spelling seems to show was actually the case), and that from this compound there was evolved a new subject glŏmung, which by normal phonetic development became Middle English glǭming, modern English gloaming."
Words that rhyme with gloaming
Questions about gloaming
- What does gloaming mean?
- Gloaming means twilight, as at early morning (dawn) or (especially) early evening; dusk.
- What is gloaming in Vietnamese?
- Gloaming in Vietnamese is hoàng hôn. See Gloaming meaning in Vietnamese.
- How do you use gloaming in a sentence?
- I clung to her nipples as she soared and swooped through the gloaming, scooping up insects, and I remember the shapes of things that she flew between, above, beneath.
- What part of speech is gloaming?
- Gloaming is a noun.
- How do you pronounce gloaming?
- Gloaming is pronounced /ˈɡləʊ.mɪŋ/ (UK).
- What is the plural of gloaming?
- The plural of gloaming is gloamings.
Words near gloaming in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: 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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-gloaming.ogg.
Cite this entry: “gloaming.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gloaming. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.