dawn
noun · verb
Simple meaning
The morning twilight period immediately before sunrise.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
dawnIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈdɔn
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
uncountable
The morning twilight period immediately before sunrise.
The earliest period
uncountable
The time when the sun rises.
countable
The rising of the sun.
uncountable
The earliest phase of something.
verb
intransitive
To begin to brighten with daylight.
Become light
“It started to dawn, and we had to get up.”
Appear or develop
“The age of computers had dawned.”
intransitivefigurative
To start to appear or become obvious.
intransitivefigurative
To begin to give promise; to begin to appear or to expand.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The morning twilight period immediately before sunrise.
Used this way, dawn is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use dawn
- “It was the dawn of the Roman Empire.”noun
- “It started to dawn, and we had to get up.”verb
- “The age of computers had dawned.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
The first light of day.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Earliest horse.
Large fast-growing Chinese monoecious tree having flat bright-green deciduous leaves and small globular cones.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.