👾 A shadowy being 🌙 At night 🌑 Mysteriously dark

darkling

9.9

Happening at night or in the dark

adjective
/ˈdɑrk.lɪŋ/

Archaic

: nocturno

The poet wrote of darkling woods where shadows danced.

Examples

The forest was eerie and darkling, with shadows creeping along the ground.
The darkling sky was filled with stars.
A darkling silence fell over the quiet, sleeping city.
They set off on a darkling adventure, guided only by the moon.
In the darkling woods, they heard strange noises.
They walked through the darkling streets, the only sounds were their footsteps and the rustle of leaves.
As night fell, the landscape transformed into a darkling realm where few dared to tread.

Synonyms

darkly

vsdarkling

7 4.0

In a place with little or no light

is poetic in tone rather than plain or neutral

Compounds

darkling beetle

1 9.1

A dark, hard-bodied beetle whose young often eat dead plants or stored grain

darkling ground beetle

9.5

A slow hard-bodied black beetle that lives on the ground whose young eat rotting plants or stored grain

Surface Forms

darkling positive

Morphology

darkling = dark (transparent) = dark + ling

Meaning is directly derived from 'dark' + '-ling' to indicate occurring in or characterized by darkness; easily inferred from the base.

Etymology

Darkling comes from the simple word dark, meaning 'without light', plus the ending -ling, which can mean 'in the way of' or 'small'. So darkling originally meant 'in the dark' or 'at night', and we use it for things that happen during darkness.