darkling

Etymology 1

From dark + -ling.

noun

1. (fantasy) A creature that lives in the dark.

Etymology 2

From Middle English derkelyng, equivalent to dark + -ling.

adv

1. In the dark; in obscurity.
   I had a dream, which was not all a dream. / The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars / Did wander darkling in the eternal space, / Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth / Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; 1816, Lord Byron, Darkness

Etymology 3

From darkle + -ing.

noun

1. Darkness.

adj

1. (poetic) Dark; growing dark; darkening.
   And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night 1867, Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach:
   The air is cool and it’s darkling, / And calmly flows the Rhine; / The mountain tops are sparkling / In sunset’s parting shrine. 1876, Heinrich Heine, translated by Thomas Selby Egan, Atta Troll and Other Poems, London: Chapman and Hall,[…], page 165
   To us and to an observer about Ripley it would have had precisely the same effect the Martians seemed in solitary possession of the darkling night, lit only as it was by the slender moon, the stars, the after-glow of the daylight[.] 1898, H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, page 140
2. (figurative) Obscure; taking place unseen, as if in the dark.

verb

1. present participle and gerund of darkle