Etymology
Origin of blackness
A Middle English word dating back to 1300–50; see origin at black, -ness
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
"What struck me wasn't necessarily just Earth, it was all the blackness around it. Earth was just this lifeboat hanging undisturbingly in the universe," said Koch.
From Barron's • Apr. 11, 2026
The crescent Earth — our oasis holding everything we cherish, now just a speck in the infinite blackness — seemed to kiss the jagged lunar surface.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 9, 2026
“This was a period in English culture before blackness acquired its fatal association with slavery,” he writes, identifying a “certain strain of indifference to color” in the thinking of the time.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 28, 2025
All eyewitnesses like Samia* can say for certain is that the lights went out suddenly, plunging D Chowk, the square where they had gathered, into blackness.
From BBC • Nov. 29, 2024
It spanned the opening to the port, a steel-blue pair of upper lips greeting the blackness.
From "It’s Kind of a Funny Story" by Ned Vizzini
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
