A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1467 entries
dimpsy
Dimpsy is twilight in the English West Country, particularly Devon and Somerset, and it is used as an adjective more than a noun. Aye, it’s getting a bit dimpsy. It names the quality of the light at dusk rather than the hour.
Etymology
It’s built on dim, which is Old English and has meant the same thing for more than a thousand years. Somerset also uses dumps as the noun for twilight and dumpsy as the adjective, recorded in a dialect glossary in 1873.
Notes
English has a lot of words for this time of day, which makes sense for people who worked outside. Cockshut comes from the time when a net was set to catch woodcock. Orkney has the grimlings.