darkling

• IPA^(key): /ˈdɑː(ɹ)klɪŋ/, (Etymology 3) /ˈdɑː(ɹ)k(ə)lɪŋ/

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• Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)klɪŋ

From dark +‎ -ling.

darkling (plural darklings)

1. (fantasy) A creature that lives in the dark.

From Middle English derkelyng, equivalent to dark +‎ -ling.

darkling (not comparable)

1. In the dark; in obscurity.
   • c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iv]:

     So, out went the candle, and we were left darkling.

   • 1667, John Milton, “Book III”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:

     As the wakeful bird sings darkling.

   • 1816, Lord Byron, Darkness:

     I had a dream, which was not all a dream. / The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars / Did wander darkling in the eternal space, / Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth / Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

From darkle +‎ -ing.

darkling (plural darklings)

1. Darkness. (Can we add an example for this sense?)

darkling (not comparable)

1. (poetic) Dark; growing dark; darkening.
   • 1867, Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach::

     And we are here as on a darkling plain
     Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
     Where ignorant armies clash by night

   • 1876, Heinrich Heine, translated by Thomas Selby Egan, Atta Troll and Other Poems, London: Chapman and Hall, […], page 165:

     The air is cool and it’s darkling, / And calmly flows the Rhine; / The mountain tops are sparkling / In sunset’s parting shrine.

   • 1898, H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, page 140:

     To us and to an observer about Ripley it would have had precisely the same effect the Martians seemed in solitary possession of the darkling night, lit only as it was by the slender moon, the stars, the after-glow of the daylight[.]

2. (figurative) Obscure; taking place unseen, as if in the dark.

darkling

1. present participle and gerund of darkle

• Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Massachusetts, G.&C. Merriam Co., 1967

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