Twilight

How to spell twilight

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce twilight

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does twilight mean?

1. nounThe soft, diffused light in the sky around sunset or, less commonly, sunrise.
2. nounA final or declining phase of something, especially a life or career.

Twilight in a sentence

• The hikers reached the cabin just as twilight faded into darkness.

• In the twilight of his career he mentored younger colleagues.

• The photographer preferred the gentle glow of twilight for portraits.

• The company spent its twilight years selling off assets.

Where does twilight come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word, recorded from around the 1400s as 'twilight', built from the rare prefix 'twi-' and the everyday noun 'light'. The element 'twi-' is the same ancient Germanic root that gives us 'two', 'twin', and 'between', and here it is usually understood as meaning 'half' or 'between', so twilight is the 'half-light' between day and night. The second half comes from Old English 'leoht', meaning brightness, the same word that survives in 'light' itself. Over time the literal sense of dim glow at dawn or dusk broadened into figurative use, as in the twilight of a career or an empire, meaning a fading final period. The spelling trap is purely the opening 'twi-', which looks unusual because the prefix is otherwise almost extinct in modern English.

How the word is built

• twi- (a prefix meaning two or half)
• light (Old English leoht: brightness)