MEANING
1. The sun’s apparent disappearance below the horizon, including the time and accompanying appearance of the evening sky.
2. The final or declining period of a life, career, or other continuing existence.
3. To end something at a set point, or require review before allowing it to continue.
Use it for
setting a scene as daylight ends; describing the last color before night; using the day’s ending as an image of mortalityLinks the visible end of a day with the final period of a life or institution without confusing that metaphor with legal expiry. Writing functions: Transience / Impermanence.
Words that belong together
- at sunset
- watch the sunset
- a winter sunset
On the page
At sunset the cemetery’s iron railings threw long shadows across the road.
The sunset reddened the empty windows of the mill.
In the sunset of her career, she returned to the stories her mother had told.
He had imagined his sunset years in the garden, not among packing crates.
A sunset clause would end the fund unless the council renewed it.
Word forms
- Base
- sunset
- Past tense
- sunsetted
- Past participle
- sunsetted
- Present participle
- sunsetting
Usage notes
Noun: sunset, sunsets; at sunset for the time, a sunset for an individual event or sky display. Adjective in sunset clause. Verb: sunset, sunsets, sunsetted, sunsetted, sunsetting; mainly US institutional usage. Register: neutral. Commonness: common; figurative decline literary and legal uses specialized (dictionary-informed qualitative editorial estimate; not a measured frequency).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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