twilight

Etymology

PIE word *dwóh₁ From Middle English twilight, twyelyghte, equivalent to twi- (“double, half-”) + light, literally ‘second light, half-light’. Cognate to Scots twa licht, twylicht, twielicht (“twilight”), Low German twilecht, twelecht (“twilight”), Dutch tweelicht (“twilight, dusk”), German Zwielicht (“twilight, dusk”). Compare Old English twēone lēoht (“twilight”).

noun

1. The soft light in the sky seen before the rising and (especially) after the setting of the sun, occasioned by the illumination of the earth’s atmosphere by the direct rays of the sun and their reflection on the earth.
   I could just make out her face in the twilight.
2. The time when this light is visible; the period between daylight and darkness.
   It was twilight by the time I got back home.
3. Any faint light through which something is seen.
   Two women, Eusabio’s wife and sister, looked on from the deep twilight of the hut. 1927, Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop, Book VII, section 4, page 233
4. (astronomy) The time when the sun is less than 18° below the horizon.
5. (figurative, by extension) An in-between or fading condition through which something is perceived.
   The twilight of one's life
   , Book IV, Chapter XIV The twilight […] of probability.

adj

1. Pertaining to or resembling twilight; faintly illuminated; obscure.

verb

1. (transitive, poetic) To illuminate faintly.