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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

sunlessness en · NOUN

Etymology

From sunless + -ness.

Meanings

  1. (uncountable) The state or characteristic of being without the sun or sunshine.
    • In Penzance and Falmouth, the total eclipse will last for 2 minutes 2 seconds. The longest period of sunlessness will be in Romania, at 2 mins 23 seconds. 1999 August 7, Tim Radford, “Light and shade”, in Guardian, UK, retrieved 03 Aug 2009:
  2. (figuratively, uncountable) Dreariness, joylessness.
    • The honor she paid the honesty of these women helped her much to pity the sunlessness of their existence, and the poor end for which they lived. 1882, George MacDonald, chapter 7, in Weighed and Wanting:
    • Given such an aware sensibility, they move, it seems to me, marginally past the sunlessness of a great deal of the wasteland literature of this century, and past the literature of despair of our own day. 1986, Terrence Anthony Whalen, Philip Larkin and English Poetry, UBC Press, →ISBN, page 116: