What does bedimming mean?
Bedimming is a relatively uncommon verb meaning to make something less bright or luminous; in literary use, it can also mean to grow dimmer. It is closely related to dim, but often carries a more deliberate, literary, or poetic quality than the plain everyday verb. A director might bedim the stage lights as a scene fades, while the horizon bedims at sunset. The word's uncommonness gives it an atmospheric quality, making it useful in writing about fading daylight, shadowed skies, or lights being lowered. It is especially effective when the loss of light is gradual rather than abrupt. As a vocabulary word, bedimming offers a more expressive alternative to dimming while remaining immediately understandable. Its central image is the reduction of brightness, whether that reduction is deliberately caused by someone, as with lamps or stage lighting, or happens naturally as evening approaches. That combination of practical and poetic uses gives the word its particular appeal.
verbTo make something less bright or luminous. In literary use, it can also mean to grow dimmer.
- Making something less bright or luminous.
- Growing dimmer, especially in literary descriptions of fading light or approaching evening.
"The lighting designer bedimmed the stage as the actors left the scene."
"The lighting designer bedimmed the stage as the actors left the scene."
"The horizon bedimmed behind the hills as evening approached."
Bedimming is dimming with an extra literary flourish.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does bedimming come from?
Bedimming belongs to the verbal family of bedim, a verb formed from the prefix be- and the adjective dim. The older base dim comes from Old English dimm, meaning “dark” or “not bright”; modern relatives include dimness and dimmable. The present-participle form bedimming adds the productive -ing ending, but the expression remains much less common than dimming.
Related word forms
How bedimming is actually used
Relatively uncommon and literary or poetic in tone; its register is broader in literary and atmospheric prose than in technical or casual speech.
Easily confused with bedimming
Dimming is the standard, everyday gerund of dim; bedimming is a rarer, more literary formation that often means making something dim.