Etymology

twilight

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Today it means: 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. Full definition →

Middle English twilight
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The story

  1. Middle English · inherited fromtwilight
  2. English todaytwilight

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”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.