sunset

Pluralsunsets

Formssunsets, sunsetting, sunsetted

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The evening moment when the sun's disk passes completely below the horizon in the west, ending direct daylight.

   They reached the summit just before sunset and paused to rest.

   The sunset arrived a little earlier each day as winter approached.

   Similarsundown, dusk, nightfall

   Oppositesunrise, dawn, daybreak

   Note

   Sun and set had already fused into one word in Middle English: son-sett appears in Gower's Confessio Amantis before 1393, and the later meanings all grow from it. As a moment of the day it is usually uncountable and often follows a preposition: at sunset, before sunset. Poe writes "'Twas sunset" in "Tamerlane" (1829), treating it as a time rather than a sight.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   The shifting colors of the sky in the period before and after the sun drops below the horizon.

   The sunset spread bands of crimson across the evening sky.

   Photographers gathered on the ridge to capture the sunset reflected in the bay.

   Similartwilight, dusk

   Oppositesunrise, dawn

3. 3
   nounfigurativelyusually singular

   The final stage in the life of a person or in the existence of a thing.

   She spent the sunset of her life surrounded by her grandchildren.

   The empire entered its sunset, its territories slipping away one by one.

   Similartwilight, evening, decline, end

   Oppositedawn, beginning

   Note

   A metaphor that borrows the day's end for the end of a life. Thomas Campbell's Pleasure of Hope (1799) has "the sunset of life," and sunset years is the everyday form, a gentle way of naming old age. It suits things as well as people, such as a career or a dynasty, and it keeps the image of a slow fading rather than an abrupt stop.

4. 4
   nouncountablebefore a noun

   A predetermined date on which something, such as a law or agreement, will automatically end.

   The agreement includes a sunset, after which all of its terms expire.

   Without a sunset, the emergency powers could continue indefinitely.

   Similarexpiration, expiry

   Note

   Most often heard before another noun, as in sunset clause, a provision that writes its own expiry into a law or agreement. The effect is to make ending the default. Keeping the measure alive takes a deliberate renewal, while letting it lapse takes nothing at all. Used alone, a sunset names the date. As a modifier it marks the clause that carries it.

5. 5
   verbtransitive

   To bring a program, policy, or product to a planned end over a set period of time.

   Regulators agreed to sunset the subsidy once the industry stabilized.

   The agency will sunset several outdated rules during the coming review.

   Similardiscontinue, retire, end, terminate

   Oppositeintroduce, launch

   Note

   Office and policy jargon for retiring something on a schedule rather than cutting it off at once. Companies sunset software versions and online services, and governments sunset subsidies and rules. Unlike set, it doubles its t and adds an ending: sunsetted, sunsetting. Sumit Paul-Choudhury still put it in scare quotes in 2011, a sign it was new to general readers. The termination-date noun names the end point itself.

6. 6
   nounusually singular

   The western region of the sky or land, the quarter where the sun goes down.

   The wagons rolled steadily into the sunset, chasing the open frontier.

   Every spring the herds drifted toward the sunset, following the new grass across hundreds of miles of plain.

   Similarwest

   Oppositeeast

   Note

   A compass point made out of a time of day: the place where the evening moment happens becomes a direction, another name for the west. The compound is old: Middle English son-sett, sun plus set, appears in Gower's Confessio Amantis before 1393. Used as a direction it takes the definite article, toward the sunset or into the sunset, just as one says toward the west.

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