Word Origins

 

TWILIGHT

Twilight is the time between day and night when the Sun is below the horizon but its rays still light up the sky. Astronomers differentiate between 3 phases: Civil twilight (brightest), Nautical twilight, and Astronomical twilight (darkest). The prefix twi- represents two, in the sense of twice. Though difficult to trace the original use, one possibility is that the two means half, rather than double. A second is that twilight may be a corruption of ’tweenlight, in the sense of “between light and dark.” This may have occurred first in German, as the word zwischenliecht, from zwischen, (between), and liecht, (light). Modern German has Zwielicht, which could have been translated literally into English as twilight, a more accurate word than ’tweenlight.

*Inspired by Charles Funk (1881–1957)