English

Alternative forms

• daunyng (15th - 16th centuries)

Noun

dawning ‎(plural dawnings)

1. (now chiefly poetic) Dawn.
   • 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, chapter ix, in Le Morte Darthur, book II:

     Anone after cam the knyght with the two swerdes and balan his broder / and brought with hem kynge Ryons of Northwalys and there delyuerd hym to the porters and charged hem with hym / & soo they two retorned ageyne in the daunyng of the day […].

   • 1824, James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Oxford 2010, p. 32:

     …he arose to make an excursion to the top of Arthur's Seat, to breathe the breeze of the dawning, and see the sun arise out of the eastern ocean.

   • 1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night

     never there / Can come the lucid morning's fragrant breath / After the dewy dawning's cold grey air

2. The first beginnings of something.

Verb

dawning

1. present participle of dawn