Dawn

How to spell dawn

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce dawn

What does dawn mean?

1. nounThe first appearance of light in the sky in the morning; daybreak.
2. verbTo begin to grow light in the morning, or for a fact to begin to be understood.

Dawn in a sentence

• noun

  The fishing boats set out before dawn each morning.

• verb

  The full cost of the project only began to dawn on the directors later.

• noun

  We reached the summit just as dawn broke over the valley.

• verb

  It took a moment for the truth to dawn on her.

Where does dawn come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native Germanic word that traces back to Old English dagung, meaning 'the becoming of day', which was built on the verb dagian 'to become day' and ultimately on dæg, the ancestor of our modern word 'day'. In Middle English the verb survived as 'dawen', describing the sky growing light, and the related forms 'dawning' and 'dawenen' were common. The short noun 'dawn' that we use today actually appeared comparatively late, around the sixteenth century, as a back-formation drawn out of 'dawning'. The same dæg root sits inside everyday words like 'daily' and 'today', which is a useful reminder that dawn is really just the moment day breaks. Its figurative use, the sense of an idea breaking like daylight on the mind, grew naturally from that image of first light arriving.

How the word is built

• dawn (from Old English dagung 'becoming day', root dæg 'day')