Word of the Day Archive
Saturday October 30, 1999
crepuscular \kri-PUS-kyuh-lur\
, adjective:
1. Of, pertaining to, or resembling twilight; dim.
2. (Zoology) Appearing or active at twilight.
I've been through their checkout and noted its resemblance to Hades - the crepuscular gloom, the dungeon lighting, the mile-long shuffling queue, the glum, sickly faces, the trolleys piled high with flat-pack cardboard units.
-- John Walsh, "btw", Independent, February 12, 2005
In the crepuscular lobby, a broad circle of monitors laid on their backs on the floor blinked up at a laser show spiraling across a tentlike scrim stretched just below the building's blacked-out skylight.
-- David Joselit, "Planet Paik - Nam June Paik's works", Art in America, June, 2000
But Monet pursued the blood-red sun rather than the blanched moon, favouring the strangely crepuscular effects created by noxious London smogs during the day.
-- Richard Cork, "Relay race", New Statesman, February 28, 2005
Most communication systems in luminescent fireflies have been studied in nocturnal species; little is known concerning communication in crepuscular and diurnal species.
-- Nobuyoshi Ohba, "Flash Communication Systems of Japanese Fireflies", Integrative and Comparative Biology, June 2004
Crepuscular comes from Latin crepusculum, twilight, from creper, dark, obscure; ultimately of Sabine origin.
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for crepuscular
