sunlessness

English

Etymology

sunless +‎ -ness

Noun

sunlessness (uncountable)

1. The state or characteristic of being without the sun or sunshine.
   • 1999 August 7, Tim Radford, “Light and shade”, in Guardian, UK, retrieved 3 Aug. 2009:

     In Penzance and Falmouth, the total eclipse will last for 2 minutes 2 seconds. The longest period of sunlessness will be in Romania, at 2 mins 23 seconds.

2. (figuratively) Dreariness, joylessness.
   • 1882, George MacDonald, chapter 7, in Weighed and Wanting:

     The honor she paid the honesty of these women helped her much to pity the sunlessness of their existence, and the poor end for which they lived.

   • 1986, Terrence Anthony Whalen, Philip Larkin and English Poetry, UBC Press, →ISBN, page 116:

     Given such an aware sensibility, they move, it seems to me, marginally past the sunlessness of a great deal of the wasteland literature of this century, and past the literature of despair of our own day.