Word.ws English Dictionary

Harlem sunset

Harlem sunset noun: a fatal wound caused by a knife fight.

Noun

Harlem sunset (plural Harlem sunsets)

  1. (US, rare, noir) A fatal wound caused by a knife fight.
    • One time there was five smokes carved Harlem sunsets on each other down on East Eighty-four.1940, Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely, A. A. Knopf, page 14
    • This wasn't some punk carving Harlem sunsets on a drugstore attendant. This was a professional job.1976, Frank Ormsby, “War Memorial”, in Seamus Heaney, editor, Soundings, volume 3, page 15

Forms of Harlem sunset

pluralHarlem sunsets

Origin of Harlem sunset

Used in Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely (1940), suggesting the red colour of a sunset.

Questions about Harlem sunset

What does Harlem sunset mean?
Harlem sunset means a fatal wound caused by a knife fight.
What part of speech is Harlem sunset?
Harlem sunset is a noun.
What is the plural of Harlem sunset?
The plural of Harlem sunset is Harlem sunsets.

Words near Harlem sunset in the dictionary

  1. Harleigh
  2. harlekin
  3. harlekins
  4. Harlem
  5. Harlem Renaissance
  6. Harlem sunset
  7. Harlem sunsets
  8. Harlemer
  9. Harlemers
  10. Harlemese
  11. Harlemite

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Harlem sunset (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.

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