dawning

• daunyng (15th - 16th centuries)

An alteration of dawing, under the influence of Scandinavian cognates (compare Swedish, Danish dagning).

• (UK), (US) IPA^(key): /ˈdɔːnɪŋ/
• (US) (in accents with the cot-caught merger) IPA^(key): /ˈdɑːnɪŋ/
• Rhymes: -ɔːnɪŋ

dawning (plural dawnings)

1. (now chiefly poetic) Dawn.
   • 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, chapter ix, in Le Morte Darthur, book II:

     Anone after cam the knyght with the two swerdes and balan his broder / and brought with hem kynge Ryons of Northwalys and there delyuerd hym to the porters and charged hem with hym / & soo they two retorned ageyne in the daunyng of the day […]

   • 1824, James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Oxford 2010, p. 32:

     […] he arose to make an excursion to the top of Arthur's Seat, to breathe the breeze of the dawning, and see the sun arise out of the eastern ocean.

   • 1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night

     never there / Can come the lucid morning's fragrant breath / After the dewy dawning's cold grey air

2. The first beginnings of something.

dawning

1. present participle of dawn

• wanding