Word.ws English Dictionary

lightless

/ˈlaɪtlɛs/

lightless adjective: lacking light; unilluminated; dark.

Adjective

lightless (not comparable)

  1. Lacking light; unilluminated; dark.
    • From the besieged Ardea all in post,
      Borne by the trustless wings of false desire,
      Lust-breathed Tarquin leaves the Roman host,
      And to Collatium bears the lightless fire
      Which, in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire
      And girdle with embracing flames the waist
      Of Collatine’s fair love, Lucrece the...1594, William Shakespeare, Lucrece (First Quarto), London: […] Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, […], →OCLC
    • "I can’t stand much of this," said Hurstwood, whose legs ached him painfully, as he sat down upon the miserable bunk in the small, lightless chamber allotted to him.1900, Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie

Origin of lightless

From Middle English lightles, from Old English lēohtlēas, from Proto-West Germanic *leuhtalaus; equivalent to light (noun) + -less (“lacking, without”). Cognate with West Frisian ljochtleas, Dutch lichtloos, German lichtlos.

Words formed from lightless

Questions about lightless

What does lightless mean?
Lightless means lacking light; unilluminated; dark.
What part of speech is lightless?
Lightless is an adjective.
How do you pronounce lightless?
Lightless is pronounced /ˈlaɪtlɛs/.

Words near lightless in the dictionary

  1. lightkeeper
  2. lightkeepers
  3. lightland
  4. Lightle
  5. Lightles
  6. lightless
  7. lightlessly
  8. lightlessness
  9. lightlier
  10. lightliest
  11. lightlike

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lightless (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: “lightless.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lightless. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.