Basic Details
Word: Darkness
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: The state of having little or no light; it can also mean a gloomy or evil quality, as in a story about the forces of darkness.
Synonyms: gloom, dimness, blackness, shadow
Antonyms: light, brightness
How to Spell Darkness
Syllables: dark - ness
Tricky part: The ending is ness with a double s. Students often stop at one s (darknes) or slip an extra e in after the k.
Watch out for: darknes, darkniss, darkeness
Memory tip: Keep dark exactly as it is and glue on the whole of ness: dark + ness. Nothing is dropped and nothing is added in between.
Usage Examples
Example 1: The power cut plunged the whole colony into darkness halfway through the cricket final.
Example 2: Owls hunt in near darkness because their large eyes gather every scrap of light.
Example 3: As darkness fell, the fishermen lit lanterns and pushed their boats out from the shore.
Fun Fact
Below about 1,000 metres in the ocean no sunlight reaches at all, so the animals there live in lasting darkness; many of them make their own glow, called bioluminescence.
Practise the CREST Way
Word Makeup
Only one of these words can take the suffix -ness to form a real word. Choose it.
ness
a) speak
b) travel
c) dark
d) window
Show answer
c) dark. Dark becomes darkness; speak, window and travel cannot take ness.
Word Cookie
Find the extra letter in the word:
darkeness
a) n
b) k
c) s
d) e
Show answer
d) e. No vowel sits between the k and the n: dark joins ness directly.
Mingle-Mangle
Unjumble the word in the sentence and choose it:
Long before dawn the village lay in deep nkrsdaes, broken only by a dog barking somewhere near the well.
a) starkness
b) darkness
c) dankness
d) harshness
Show answer
b) darkness. Dankness has no r, while starkness and harshness need letters that are not in the jumble.
Word Connection
Choose the word opposite in meaning to darkness as used in the sentence:
After two hours of darkness inside the cave, the explorers blinked at the sudden glare of the sun.
a) gloom
b) dusk
c) brightness
d) shadow
Show answer
c) brightness. Brightness is the presence of light, the exact reverse of darkness; gloom and shadow are near-synonyms.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. Which of these would help you most in total darkness?
a) sunglasses
b) an umbrella
c) a mirror
d) a torch
Show answer
d) a torch
2. In a fairy tale about "the forces of darkness", darkness stands for ____.
a) a power cut
b) sleep
c) evil
d) night time
Show answer
c) evil
