Dark

How to spell dark

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce dark

What does dark mean?

1. adjectiveHaving little or no light.
2. adjectiveDeep or near to black in shade; not pale.
3. nounThe absence of light; nightfall or darkness.

Dark in a sentence

• adjective

  The hallway was too dark to find the light switch.

• adjective

  He wore a dark suit to the interview.

• noun

  The children were afraid of the dark when the power failed.

• adjective

  She prefers a dark room for sleeping during the day.

• adjective

  The walls were painted a dark shade of green.

• noun

  He stumbled around in the dark looking for his phone.

Where does dark come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes straight from the Old English deorc, which meant 'dark, gloomy, sad', and so it belongs to the native Germanic core of English rather than to any borrowed vocabulary. The exact roots beyond Germanic are a little hazy, but it is connected to a set of words in the older Germanic languages describing concealment and dimness. For much of its early life it carried strong figurative weight, describing moral wickedness or hidden secrets as readily as the absence of light. Over the centuries the spelling settled into the compact four-letter form we use now, with the original 'eo' vowel simplifying to a plain 'a'. Because it is short and phonetically regular, it is one of the easier words in the language to spell, and it has stayed remarkably stable for over a thousand years.

How the word is built

• dark (from Old English deorc: dark, gloomy); no affixes