darkling

adv

1. (not-comparable)In the dark; in obscurity.

   “So, out went the candle, and we were left darkling.”

   “As the wakeful bird sings darkling.”

   “I had a dream, which was not all a dream. / The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars / Did wander darkling in the eternal space, / Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth / Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;”

adj

1. (not-comparable, poetic)Dark; growing dark; darkening.

   “She still pursued its flight, with all the speed / Her fainting strength had hitherto supplied: / What pathless wilds she crossed ! What forests darkling wide !”

   “May thine autumn calm, serene, / Never want some lingering flower, / Which Affection's hand may glean, / Though the darkling mists may lower !”

   “And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night”

   “The air is cool and it’s darkling, / And calmly flows the Rhine; / The mountain tops are sparkling / In sunset’s parting shrine.”

   “To us and to an observer about Ripley it would have had precisely the same effect the Martians seemed in solitary possession of the darkling night, lit only as it was by the slender moon, the stars, the after-glow of the daylight[.]”

2. (figuratively, not-comparable)Obscure; taking place unseen, as if in the dark.

noun

1. (rare, uncountable)Darkness.

   “She carried some rugs for me through the shrubbery in the darkling. "They'll think we've gone mooning," she said, jerking her head at the household. "I wonder what they make of us – criminals."”

2. (obsolete)A child of darkness; someone dark by nature or who has grown dark in character.
3. A creature that lives in the dark.
4. (poetic)A demon.

verb

1. (form-of, gerund, participle, present)present participle and gerund of darkle