dawn

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (6)  · 
“
The darkness before the dawn, the deathly chill before the dawn were here.

View all »
Definitions (22)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (5)

  1. noun The time each morning at which daylight first begins.
  2. noun A first appearance; a beginning: the dawn of history. See Synonyms at beginning.
  3. intransitive verb To begin to become light in the morning.
2 more from this dictionary »

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (9)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (2)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (6)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • Once I had slept outside on the shores of Chimney Pond so that I could capture Mount Katahdin at dawn; but my dawn was the pinched wick of a candle next to the incandescence I now beheld. —  MFSF,January2005
  • "As the dawn is a cause of joy after the darkness and gloom of night, so was the birth of Mary." —  cause of our joy
  • Then she realised that every one else had hurried away as precipitately as she had done, for the dawn was already in the sky. —  The Lowest Rung Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy
  • The mystery of the dawn was as if it had never been. —  There was a King in Egypt
  • And now she knew, with shame and dread, that he who had won her love between the twilight and the dawn was a thing to shame her, a monster to be shunned of men What, then, shall I do?" —  A Book of Myths
More examples »
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 179 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Add a related word »
Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

twilight ·  sunset ·  noon ·  sunshine ·  sky ·  daylight ·  sunrise ·  moon ·  morning ·  mist ·  glow ·  midnight

Used in the same contextWord Family

dawn:   dawned ·  dawning ·  dawns
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. From Middle English daunen, to dawn, probably a back-formation from dauning, daybreak, alteration of dauing, from Old English dagung, from dagian, to dawn; see agh- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. from Middle English dawnen (late and rare), substituted, through influence of earlier noun dawninge (see dawning), for reg. dawen, dagen, daien, dayen, dawn: see daw, day.
  2. from dawn, v. The older nouns are dawing and dawning.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »
/dɔn/
by American Heritage

Charts
frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word about once a day.

Recently looked up

admonishment · toast · whitetail · wildcatter · fixation

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

procrastinate · its not like im ugly people tell me im pretty · be careful! the razor is razor-sharp! · minty-fresh death threat · please stop sucking the monkeybread