From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
1. Absence of light; darkness; obscurity; a place where there is little or no light.
Here stood he in the dark, his sharp sword out. --Shak.
2. The condition of ignorance; gloom; secrecy.
Look, what you do, you do it still i' th' dark. --Shak.
Till we perceive by our own understandings, we are as much in the dark, and as void of knowledge, as before. --Locke.
3. (Fine Arts) A dark shade or dark passage in a painting, engraving, or the like; as, the light and darks are well contrasted.
The lights may serve for a repose to the darks, and the darks to the lights. --Dryden.
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Dark \Dark\ (d[aum]rk), adjective [OE. dark, derk, deork, AS. dearc, deorc; cf. Gael. & Ir. dorch, dorcha, dark, black, dusky.]
1. Destitute, or partially destitute, of light; not receiving, reflecting, or radiating light; wholly or partially black, or of some deep shade of color; not light-colored; as, a dark room; a dark day; dark cloth; dark paint; a dark complexion.
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse Without all hope of day! --Milton.
In the dark and silent grave. --Sir W. Raleigh.
2. Not clear to the understanding; not easily seen through; obscure; mysterious; hidden.
The dark problems of existence. --Shairp.
What may seem dark at the first, will afterward be found more plain. --Hooker.
What's your dark meaning, mouse, of this light word? --Shak.
3. Destitute of knowledge and culture; in moral or intellectual darkness; unrefined; ignorant.
The age wherein he lived was dark, but he Could not want light who taught the world to see. --Denhan.
The tenth century used to be reckoned by medi[ae]val historians as the darkest part of this intellectual night. --Hallam.
4. Evincing black or foul traits of character; vile; wicked; atrocious; as, a dark villain; a dark deed.
Left him at large to his own dark designs. --Milton.
5. Foreboding evil; gloomy; jealous; suspicious.
More dark and dark our woes. --Shak.
A deep melancholy took possesion of him, and gave a dark tinge to all his views of human nature. --Macaulay.
There is, in every true woman-s heart, a spark of heavenly fire, which beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity. --W. Irving.
6. Deprived of sight; blind. [Obs.]
He was, I think, at this time quite dark, and so had been for some years. --Evelyn.
Note: Dark is sometimes used to qualify another adjective; as, dark blue, dark green, and sometimes it forms the first part of a compound; as, dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark-colored, dark-seated, dark-working.
{A dark horse}, in racing or politics, a horse or a candidate whose chances of success are not known, and whose capabilities have not been made the subject of general comment or of wagers. [Colloq.]
{Dark house}, {Dark room}, a house or room in which madmen were confined. [Obs.] --Shak.
{Dark lantern}. See {Lantern}. -- The
{Dark Ages}, a period of stagnation and obscurity in literature and art, lasting, according to Hallam, nearly 1000 years, from about 500 to about 1500 A. D.. See {Middle Ages}, under {Middle}.
{The Dark and Bloody Ground}, a phrase applied to the State of Kentucky, and said to be the significance of its name, in allusion to the frequent wars that were waged there between Indians.
{The dark day}, a day (May 19, 1780) when a remarkable and unexplained darkness extended over all New England.
{To keep dark}, to reveal nothing. [Low]
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Dark \Dark\, verb (used with an object) To darken; to obscure. [Obs.] --Milton.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
adjective
1: devoid or partially devoid of light or brightness; shadowed or black or somber-colored; "sitting in a dark corner"; "a dark day"; "dark shadows"; "the theater is dark on Mondays"; "dark as the inside of a black cat" [ant: {light}]
2: (used of color) having a dark hue; "dark green"; "dark glasses"; "dark colors like wine red or navy blue" [ant: {light}]
3: brunet (used of hair or skin or eyes); "dark eyes"
4: stemming from evil characteristics or forces; wicked or dishonorable; "black deeds"; "a black lie"; "his black heart has concocted yet another black deed"; "Darth Vader of the dark side"; "a dark purpose"; "dark undercurrents of ethnic hostility"; "the scheme of some sinister intelligence bent on punishing him"-Thomas Hardy [syn: {black}, {sinister}]
5: causing dejection; "a blue day"; "the dark days of the war"; "a week of rainy depressing weather"; "a disconsolate winter landscape"; "the first dismal dispiriting days of November"; "a dark gloomy day"; "grim rainy weather" [syn: {blue}, {depressing}, {disconsolate}, {dismal}, {dispiriting}, {gloomy}, {grim}]
6: secret; "keep it dark"; "the dark mysteries of Africa and the fabled wonders of the East"
7: showing a brooding ill humor; "a dark scowl"; "the proverbially dour New England Puritan"; "a glum, hopeless shrug"; "he sat in moody silence"; "a morose and unsociable manner"; "a saturnine, almost misanthropic young genius"- Bruce Bliven; "a sour temper"; "a sullen crowd" [syn: {dour}, {glowering}, {glum}, {moody}, {morose}, {saturnine}, {sour}, {sullen}]
8: lacking enlightenment or knowledge or culture; "this benighted country"; "benighted ages of barbarism and superstition"; "the dark ages"; "a dark age in the history of education" [syn: {benighted}]
9: marked by difficulty of style or expression; "much that was dark is now quite clear to me"; "those who do not appreciate Kafka's work say his style is obscure" [syn: {obscure}]
10: having skin rich in melanin pigments; "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People"; "the dark races"; "dark-skinned peoples" [syn: {colored}, {coloured}, {dark-skinned}]
11: not giving performances; closed; "the theater is dark on Mondays"
noun
1: absence of light or illumination [syn: {darkness}] [ant: {light}]
2: absence of moral or spiritual values; "the powers of darkness" [syn: {iniquity}, {wickedness}, {darkness}]
3: an unilluminated area; "he moved off into the darkness" [syn: {darkness}, {shadow}]
4: the time after sunset and before sunrise while it is dark outside [syn: {night}, {nighttime}] [ant: {day}]
5: an unenlightened state; "he was in the dark concerning their intentions"; "his lectures dispelled the darkness" [syn: {darkness}]
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
454 Moby Thesaurus words for "dark": Egyptian darkness, Erebus, Gothicism, Stygian, ableptical, abominable, abstruse, adiaphanous, age of ignorance, amaurotic, amoral, amorphous, amorphousness, apocalyptic, arcane, arrant, atramentous, atrocious, bad, baleful, baneful, barbarism, base, beamless, beetle-browed, benighted, benightedness, benightment, bereft of light, black, black as coal, black as ebony, black as ink, black as midnight, black as night, black-browed, black-skinned, blackish, blackness, blamable, blameworthy, bleak, blear, bleared, bleary, blind, blurred, blurry, bodeful, boding, brown, brunet, cabalistic, caliginous, castellatus, censored, cheerless, cirrose, cirrous, classified, clear as mud, close, closed, closemouthed, cloud-flecked, clouded, cloudy, coal-black, coaly, color-blind, colored, complicated, concealed, confused, conscienceless, corrupt, corrupted, criminal, crooked, cryptic, cumuliform, cumulous, damnable, dark age, dark as night, dark as pitch, dark-colored, dark-complexioned, dark-skinned, darkish, darkling, darkness, darkness visible, darksome, dead of night, deep, deep black, dejected, devilish, devious, dim, dim-sighted, dire, dirty, discreet, disgraceful, dishonest, dishonorable, dismal, doleful, doomful, doubtful, dour, drab, drear, drearisome, dreary, dubious, dull, dumpish, dun, dusk, dusky, ebon, ebony, eclipsed, enigmatic, esoteric, evasive, evil, evil-starred, execrable, eyeless, faint, fateful, feeble, felonious, filmy, fishy, flagitious, flagrant, fog, fogginess, foggy, foreboding, foul, fraudulent, frowning, funebrial, funereal, fuzziness, fuzzy, gloom, gloominess, gloomy, glowering, glum, grave, gray, grim, grum, grumly, half-seen, half-visible, hazy, heathenism, heavy, heinous, hellish, hemeralopic, hermetic, hidden, hush-hush, ignorance, ignorant, ill, ill-boding, ill-defined, ill-fated, ill-got, ill-gotten, ill-lighted, ill-lit, ill-omened, ill-starred, immoral, impenetrable, impervious to light, improper, in darkness, in the dark, inauspicious, incomprehensible, inconspicuous, indefinite, indeterminate, indeterminateness, indirect, indistinct, indistinctness, indistinguishable, infamous, iniquitous, ink-black, inky, insidious, intense darkness, intransparent, intricate, jetty, joyless, knavish, knotty, latent, lenticularis, lightlessness, low, low-profile, lowering, mammatus, melancholy, melanian, melanic, melanistic, melano, melanotic, melanous, menacing, merely glimpsed, midnight, mind-blind, mist, mistiness, misty, monstrous, moodish, moody, moonlessness, mopey, moping, mopish, morose, mournful, muddy, mumbo jumbo, mumpish, murk, murkiness, murky, mysterious, mystic, mystical, mystification, mystifying, naughty, nebulous, nefarious, night, night-black, night-clad, night-cloaked, night-dark, night-enshrouded, night-filled, night-mantled, night-veiled, nightfall, nigrescent, nigrous, nimbose, not kosher, nubilous, nyctalopic, obfuscated, obfuscation, obscurantism, obscuration, obscure, obscure darkness, obscured, obscurity, occult, occulted, of evil portent, ominous, opacity, opaque, out of focus, overcast, overclouded, paganism, pale, peccant, perplexity, pessimistic, pitch-black, pitch-dark, pitch-darkness, pitchy, pitchy darkness, portending, profound, puzzling, questionable, rank, raven, raven-black, rayless, recondite, reprehensible, reprobate, restricted, roiled, roily, rotten, sable, sad, satanic, saturnine, savagery, scandalous, scowling, secret, secretive, semivisible, shadowy, shady, shameful, shameless, shapeless, shapelessness, shifty, sightless, sinful, sinister, slippery, sloe, sloe-black, sloe-colored, smothered, sober, solemn, somber, sombrous, sorrowful, spiritually blind, squally, stark blind, starless, starlessness, stifled, stone-blind, stormy, stratiform, stratous, subfusc, sulky, sullen, sunless, sunlessness, suntanned, suppressed, surly, suspicious, swart, swarth, swarthiness, swarthy, tar-black, tarry, tenebrious, tenebrose, tenebrosity, tenebrous, tenebrousness, the palpable obscure, threatening, thunderheaded, top secret, total darkness, transcendent, tricky, triste, turbid, ulterior, unbreatheable, uncertain, unclarity, unclear, unclearness, uncommunicative, unconscienced, unconscientious, unconscionable, undefined, under security, under wraps, underhand, underhanded, undiscerning, undisclosable, undisclosed, undivulgable, undivulged, unenlightened, unenlightenment, unethical, unfathomable, unfavorable, unforgivable, unfortunate, unilluminated, unlighted, unlit, unlucky, unobserving, unpardonable, unperceiving, unplain, unplainness, unprincipled, unpromising, unpropitious, unrecognizable, unrevealable, unrevealed, unsavory, unscrupulous, unseeing, unspeakable, unspoken, unstraightforward, untellable, untold, untoward, unutterable, unuttered, unwhisperable, unworthy, vague, vagueness, velvet darkness, vicious, vile, villainous, visionless, weak, weariful, wearisome, weary, wicked, without remorse, without shame, wrong
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