💡 Power cut 🧠 Loss of memory 🌑 Lights turned off 📺 Broadcast stopped ✍️ Erased poem

blackout

17 5.7

A time when people turn off lights in a city to hide from enemy planes

noun
/ˈblækˌaʊt/

Archaic

: apagón

Afraid of air raid attacks, New York had blackout drills and lights were dimmed in public spaces.
blackout orders
blackout curtains
blackout zone

Examples

During World War II, the city implemented a strict blackout policy to prevent enemy aircraft from spotting it at night.
The authorities announced a temporary blackout to prepare for the air raid drills scheduled for that evening.
We thought at first that it was just a blackout, but the power never came back on.

Fiction book (1991)
"During the war, she installed blackout curtains on every window in our house.

Fiction book (1991)
Their candles looked like fireflies at night, flickering glimmers against the total blackout of the town.

Fiction book (2000)
In order to comply with safety regulations, residents were instructed to observe a complete blackout during the drill.

Synonyms

brownout

vsblackout

Archaic

1 9.0

A reduction of city lights at night to hide from enemy planes

is total extinction creating a full dark period rather than partial dimming

Antonyms

lighting

207 3.1

The way artificial light is placed and used in a room or on stage to create an effect

How Hidden

blackout

Archaic

17 5.7

cover-up

Literature

137 5.5

obscuration

1 8.2

concealment

8 5.0

Surface Forms

blackout singular

blackouts plural

Morphology

blackout = black (semi-transparent) = out + black

The components 'black' and 'out' are clear, but the specific meaning of a 'period of darkness' is a specialized usage. [Postprocessing: moved 'out' from base_words to prefix]

Etymology

Blackout combines black ('dark') and out ('off'), and it became common in wartime when cities put their lights out so enemy planes could not see them. So a blackout is a deliberate period of darkness.