Derknesse

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The state of having little or no light, making things hard or impossible to see ; a spiritual condition of ignorance, sin or wickedness
2. Lack of illumination that leaves a place gloomy and unseen ; moral or spiritual ignorance, or the wickedness that results from it
3. A dim, unlit condition in which objects cannot be made out ; an absence of understanding or goodness, often linked with evil

Etymology: Middle English "derknesse" is the older spelling of "darkness," and it shows how the word was built. It comes from the adjective "derk" (later "dark"), which in Old English was "deorc," and the suffix "-nes," an Old English ending that turns an adjective into an abstract noun, as in "goodness" or "kindness." So the word is simply "dark-ness," the state of being dark, assembled from native parts rather than borrowed from Latin or French. The most surprising twist is in the vowel. Old English "deorc" had a rounded vowel that was later unrounded, and in many Middle English dialects the word was spelled and pronounced with an "e" that moved toward "a" in the Great Vowel Shift era, giving us the modern "dark." Before that, "deorc" was a rare word in Old English texts, often used of gloom, wickedness or spiritual blindness rather than just the absence of light, which is why the noun could carry moral and religious weight in medieval writing.