the.com/gloom

a mood with weather rights, free to occupy any sky or skull.

means A state of darkness, dimness, or low spirits — the heavy half-light of a sad or shadowed place or person.

from From Middle English 'gloumen' or 'glomen,' meaning to look sullen or frown, a verb older than the noun — people scowled before the word named the murk. It's related to Scots and dialect words for twilight and overcast skies, and is possibly a cousin of 'glum,' which grew from the same sullen root. Notably, Milton helped shift 'gloom' toward its modern sense of darkness in 'Paradise Lost,' so the word that began as a face eventually became the weather.

old norse
root means twilight, that dim almost-dark hour
verb first
originally meant to scowl, not to despair
gloaming kin
shares ancestry with dusk's softest word
doom rhyme
poets pair them because despair loves company
weather report
forecasters still call grey overcast skies gloomy
for instance

seattle weather pattern — seattle receives 152 rainy days per year, earning its reputation for persistent gray skies

britain winter months — london gets only 1.5 hours of daylight on winter solstice, creating months of darkness

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