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dawn to dusk

dawn to dusk

2 2.8
All day from sunrise until sunset
  • idiom
translation icon : de amanecer a anochecer
  • We have worked from dawn to dusk, but they are spoiled.
  • work from dawn to dusk

Now, it may be true that a Korean child studies from dawn to dusk, and that a Korean parent may impoverish himself to support his child studies.

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Examples

  • All over the world, Muslims are performing one of the five pillars of Islam as they fast from dawn to dusk during the holy month of Ramadan.

    Blog text (17)
  • Trust (Quarry Road, Becket) is open dawn to dusk every day of the year.

    Blog text (22)
  • From dawn to dusk, my meals would come.

  • I mean, I was doing it all day long, just dawn to dusk, going on to small shows, big shows, anybody who would have me and, and there was a whole group of other people doing that.

  • We can bicker about it from dawn to dusk.

    Blog text (33)
  • From dawn to dusk, he could be seen chasing off the flocks of birds that came to feed on his crops.

    Fiction book (2000)
  • Most people here live in small, autonomous villages tucked into high mountain valleys and work dawn to dusk just to scratch out a meager living as subsistence farmers, shepherds, or goatherds.

    Academic text (2011)
  • The park is open for visitors from dawn to dusk every day.

  • Farmers often work in the fields from dawn to dusk during harvest season.

  • She enjoys hiking in the mountains from dawn to dusk during the summer.

Synonyms

day
vsdawn to dusk
1.0

The time between sunrise and sunset when it is light outside

covers the full uninterrupted span from morning through evening
daylight
vsdawn to dusk
294 1.0

Natural light from the sun during the day

refers to the full continuous time span rather than to the light itself
daytime
vsdawn to dusk
131 1.0

The time when the sun is up

emphasizes the whole continuous period from sunrise into the evening

How Long

dawn to dusk
2 2.8
for a while
1.0

Surface Forms

dawn to dusk positive

Morphology

dawn + to + dusk

The meaning 'from the beginning of the day until evening' is directly and compositionally derived from 'dawn' + 'to' + 'dusk', with 'to' marking a temporal range. This range-construction is cross-linguistically common and follows standard temporal prepositional patterns, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will readily understand the expression.

Etymology

The phrase dawn to dusk comes from watching the sun: dawn is when the sun rises and dusk is when it sets. So, people who worked from dawn to dusk worked the whole day, and today the phrase means 'from the beginning of the day until the evening'.