dusken

present singular third person duskens · participle present duskening · participle past duskened · past duskened

1. transitiveTo make dusky or obscure.

   Twilight began to dusken the quiet of the house.

   1906, George Banghart Henry Swayze, Yarb and Cretine, page 123

   2 more examples

   It was last seen and heard of by some macgillic-cuddies above a lonely valley of their reeks, duskening the greylight as it flew, its cry echechohoing among the anfractuosities: pour la dernière fois,' The blackbulled ones, stampeding, drew in their horns, all appailed and much upset, which explaints the guttermilk on their overcoats.

   1932, James Joyce, “From a Banned Writer to a Banned Singer”, in The Complete Works of James Joyce, published 2016

   The sayd epigrame was not utterly defaced, but only duskened or rased.

   1550, Thucydides, translated by Thomas Nichols, The hystory writtone by Thucidides the Athenyan of the warre, translation of History of the Peloponnesian War (in Ancient Greek)

2. intransitiveTo grow or become dusky.

   Noble you must be: noble too am I / If true the tale that Danewulf loves to tell / When twilight duskens round the crackling logs

   1801, Henry James Pye, Alfred

   2 more examples

   He vanished so quickly that she looked down the duskening street in vain to see a stalwart officer, whom she had fully intended to accompany on his way to get a little better acquainted with him.

   1945, Grace Livingston Hill, All Through the Night

   When in a meadow, or, as now, in a quiet, already duskening wood, he would involuntarily begin to wonder if, through this silence, he might perhaps hear the entire, enormous world traversing space with a melodious whistle, the bustle of distant cities, the pounding of sea waves, the singing of telegraph wires above the deserts.

   1995 [1924], Dmitri Nabokov, “La Veneziana”, in The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, translation of original by Vladimir Nabokov