dimmit

English

Noun

dimmit (countable and uncountable, plural dimmits)

1. (UK dialectal, Devon, Cornwall, West Country) Alternative form of dimmet (Twilight; dusk; crepusculum)
   • 1858, Edward Capern, “Kitty Lile; or, Mazed Kate of Clovelly”, in Ballads and Songs, London: W. Kent & Co., page 132:

     “ My Billy is out with his boat in the bay.
     To snare the bright herring for me,
     And I, with my arms, in the dimmit of day,
     Will snare the bold son of the sea.”

   • 1867 August, L. Gidley, “A Harvest Custom in Devonshire”, in The Gentleman's Magazine, volume IV, number 186, page 215:

     The following account of the same custom, as practised at Bideford, North Devon, has been communicated to me by J. G. Cooper, Esq., of that town “ The custom appears to have been immediately at the end of the day when the reapers had completed their cutting, usually in the twilight of the autumn evening (‘ in the dimmit ’ : Devonice), for the whole party to gather in a circle, […]

   • 1888, G. B. Stuart, “Poppy”, in Charles W. Wood, editor, The Argosy, Summer edition, volume XLV, London, page 81:

     If you choose to carry the girl about in your cart, to Polworthy an' back, 'tis no account o' mine ; nor if you're a mind to waste your time in the dimmit (twilight), hangin' round Gridge's cottage, as I do hear ; but you won't drag me into it, and that's final.

   • 1893, Sabine Baring-Gould, “In the Smoke” (chapter VIII), in Mrs. Curgenven of Curgenven, volume III, Methuen & Co., page 93:

     ‘Punch 'll mind the door, and bark if any one comes nigh. Then in the dimmits’ (twilight) ‘you can go.’

   • 1894, W. J. Knox Little, chapter VI, in The Waif from the Waves, London: Chapman & Hall, page 53:

     When she left the Hall she went by the lower path across the park, not by the church and the sea. It was the gloaming of a November afternoon—the " dimmits," as we call it in Cornwall—and "gloaming," as you know, at that time means almost the dark.

   • 1896 June, Mary Hartier, “An Evening with Hodge”, in The English Illustrated Magazine, number 153, page 259:

     'Twas getting on vor the dimmits, and I hitched up the mare and went vore tii the back entrance. As I passed the kitchen winder I seed Albertina sitting there all alone, because 'er master and missus was well-to-do, and sat in the parlour evenings ; and I zim tü go all of a treemor like.

   • 1950 February, Doreen Idle, chapter 11, in The Last Knot, London: Hodder & Stoughton, page 137:

     And now, as the evenings were so light, she would have time to walk, perhaps, even so far as Quarry Point, and still get back before the dusk—the ‘dimmits’ as Sarah called it—came.