What does dayspring mean?
Dayspring is an archaic English noun meaning the first appearance of daylight: the dawn. Formed transparently from "day" and "spring" in its older sense of "rising," it literally captures the idea of the day's springing forth. Though long absent from everyday conversation, it endures in literary and especially religious language — most notably in the King James Bible's rendering of Luke 1:78, where the "Dayspring from on high" refers to Christ as the dawning light, a phrasing echoed in hymns and liturgical texts. Because it is immediately understandable despite its age, writers sometimes revive dayspring deliberately to lend prose or verse an elevated, luminous quality. It belongs to a small family of picturesque dawn words — alongside daybreak, aurora, and cockcrow — that let authors vary their descriptions of morning. To call something a dayspring today is almost always a deliberate stylistic choice, evoking hope, renewal, and the quiet promise of light after darkness.
nounThe beginning or first light of day; dawn. An archaic or literary word for daybreak.
- The first appearance of light in the morning; daybreak, dawn (archaic or literary).
"They set out at the dayspring, while the mist still clung to the valley."
"The shepherds rose at the dayspring to tend their flocks on the hillside."
"In the old hymn, the Dayspring from on high is hailed as the light that visits those dwelling in darkness."
Rarely used in the plural; dayspring normally appears in the singular because each day has only one dawn.
"The poet compared the daysprings of successive mornings to repeated acts of creation."
"Dayspring" survives most famously in the King James Bible's "Dayspring from on high" — a poetic name for Christ as the coming dawn.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of dayspring
Dayspring is formed from Old English roots: "day" (from dæg) combined with "spring" in its original sense of "rising up" or "bursting forth," so the compound literally means "the day's rising." The word existed in Old and Middle English and was well established by the time of Early Modern English translations of the Bible, which fixed its place in religious English. Its formation parallels other Germanic dawn compounds such as "daybreak."
How dayspring is actually used
Dayspring is archaic in ordinary speech but persists in religious and literary contexts, particularly in Bible translations such as the King James Version (Luke 1:78) and in hymnody, where it may be capitalized when used figuratively of Christ. It carries an elevated, poetic connotation rather than everyday use.
Easily confused with dayspring
Spring refers either to the season after winter or to a coiled elastic device, whereas dayspring means the dawn itself.
A daydream is a pleasant fantasy one has while awake, whereas dayspring denotes the first light of morning.