# gloaming

> English word · Noun · IPA /ˈɡləʊ.mɪŋ/ · frequency rank #98,167

## Definitions
1. Twilight, as at early morning (dawn) or (especially) early evening; dusk.
2. Sullenness; melancholy.

## Etymology
From a dialectal variant of glooming, from Middle English *gloming, from Old English glōmung, from Old English glōm (“twilight”). By surface analysis, gloom + -ing. Related to glow.
The OED notes: "The vowel of the modern gloaming is anomalous, as Old English glōmung should normally become glooming. The explanation is probably that the ō was shortened in the compound ǣfen-glommung (as the spelling seems to show was actually the case), and that from this compound there was evolved a new subject glŏmung, which by normal phonetic development became Middle English glǭming, modern English gloaming."

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/gloaming