nigrescent

From Latin nigrescens, present participle of nigrescere (“to grow black”), from niger (“black”). See negro.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /nɪˈɡɹɛsənt/, /naɪˈɡɹɛsənt/
• Rhymes: -ɛsənt

nigrescent (comparative more nigrescent, superlative most nigrescent)

1. Growing or becoming black; approaching blackness; blackish.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Johnson to this entry?)

   • 1958, Sutton, Jefferson Howard, “Chapter 9”, in First on the Moon‎:

     There is no dawn on the moon, no dusk, no atmosphere to catch and spread the light of the sun. When the lunar night ends—a night two earth weeks long—the sun simply pops over the horizon, bringing its intolerable heat. But the sky remains black—black and sprinkled with stars agleam with a light unknown on earth. At night the temperature is 250 degrees below zero; by day it is the heat of boiling water. Yet the sun is but an intense circle of white aloft in a nigrescent sky.

• See Thesaurus:black

• nigrescence

• albescent (“becoming white”), erubescent (“becoming red”), flavescent (“becoming yellow”), virescent (“becoming green”)

• centerings, centreings

nīgrēscent

1. third-person plural future active indicative of nīgrēscō