dusken
English
Verb
dusken (third-person singular simple present duskens, present participle duskening, simple past and past participle duskened)
- (transitive) To make dusky or obscure.
- (Can we date this quote?), James Joyce, “From a Banned Writer to a Banned Singer”, in The Complete Works of James Joyce, published 2016:
- It was last seen and heard of by some macgillic-cuddies above a lonely valley of their reeks, duskening the greylight as it flew, its cry echechohoing among the anfractuosities: pour la dernière fois,' The blackbulled ones, stampeding, drew in their horns, all appailed and much upset, which explaints the guttermilk on their overcoats.
- 1550, Thomas Nichols, The hystory writtone by Thucidides the Athenyan of the warre, translation of History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides:
- The sayd epigrame was not utterly defaced, but only duskened or rased.
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- (intransitive) To grow or become dusky.
- 1801, Henry James Pye, Alfred:
- Noble you must be: noble too am I / If true the tale that Danewulf loves to tell / When twilight duskens round the crackling logs
- 1945, Grace Livingston Hill, All Through the Night:
- He vanished so quickly that she looked down the duskening street in vain to see a stalwart officer, whom she had fully intended to accompany on his way to get a little better acquainted with him.
- 1995 [1924], Dmitri Nabokov, “La Veneziana”, in The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, translation of original by Vladimir Nabokov:
- When in a meadow, or, as now, in a quiet, already duskening wood, he would involuntarily begin to wonder if, through this silence, he might perhaps hear the entire, enormous world traversing space with a melodious whistle, the bustle of distant cities, the pounding of sea waves, the singing of telegraph wires above the deserts.
-
Middle English
Etymology
From Old English doxian; equivalent to dosk + -en.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈdɔskən/, /ˈduskən/, /ˈdɛskən/
Conjugation
Conjugation of dusken (weak)
infinitive | (to) dusken | |
---|---|---|
indicative | present | past |
1st person singular | duske | duskede |
2nd person singular | duskest | duskedest |
3rd person singular | duskeþ, dusketh | duskede |
plural | dusken | duskeden |
subjunctive | present | past |
singular | duske | duskede |
plural | dusken | duskeden |
imperative | present | |
singular | duske | |
plural | duskeþ, dusketh | |
participle | present | past |
duskende, duskinge | dusked, ydusked |
Descendants
- English: dusk
References
- “dusken (v.)” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2019-1-10.
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