The Collaborative International Dictionary
Dim \Dim\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Dimmed; p. pr. & vb. n. Dimming.]
-
To render dim, obscure, or dark; to make less bright or distinct; to take away the luster of; to darken; to dull; to obscure; to eclipse.
A king among his courtiers, who dims all his attendants.
--Dryden.Now set the sun, and twilight dimmed the ways.
--Cowper. -
To deprive of distinct vision; to hinder from seeing clearly, either by dazzling or clouding the eyes; to darken the senses or understanding of.
Her starry eyes were dimmed with streaming tears.
--C. Pitt.
Wiktionary
n. The process of becoming dim. vb. (present participle of dim English)
WordNet
adj. lacking in light; not bright or harsh; "a dim light beside the bed"; "subdued lights and soft music" [syn: subdued]
lacking clarity or distinctness; "a dim figure in the distance"; "only a faint recollection"; "shadowy figures in the gloom"; "saw a vague outline of a building through the fog"; "a few wispy memories of childhood" [syn: faint, shadowy, vague, wispy]
made dim or less bright; "the dimmed houselights brought a hush of anticipation"; "dimmed headlights"; "we like dimmed lights when we have dinner" [syn: dimmed] [ant: undimmed]
offering little or no hope; "the future looked black"; "prospects were bleak"; "Life in the Aran Islands has always been bleak and difficult"- J.M.Synge; "took a dim view of things" [syn: black, bleak]
slow to learn or understand; lacking intellectual acuity; "so dense he never understands anything I say to him"; "never met anyone quite so dim"; "although dull at classical learning, at mathematics he was uncommonly quick"- Thackeray; "dumb officials make some really dumb decisions"; "he was either normally stupid or being deliberately obtuse"; "worked with the slow students" [syn: dense, dull, dumb, obtuse, slow]
v. switch (a car's headlights) from a higher to a lower beam [syn: dip]
become or make darker; "The screen darkend"; "He darkened the colors by adding brown" [syn: darken] [ant: brighten]
become dim or lusterless; "the lights dimmed and the curtain rose"
make dim or lusterless; "Time had dimmed the silver"
make dim by comparison or conceal [syn: blind]
become vague or indistinct; "The distinction between the two theories blurred" [syn: blur, slur] [ant: focus]
See dim
Wikipedia
Usage examples of "dimming".
She lay back on the bed, staring through the transparent roof at the lazy winding valleys beyond the dimming axial light-tube.
The blur remained motionless, dimming slowly, losing its tinge of unearthly color, taking on the blueness of evening.
With practiced ease, Harold spooned a dollop of crime fraiche on to the side of the plates, poured a chilled Pouilly Fume, and silently retreated, dimming the lights as he went so that only the fire and the flickering of the candles illuminated the room.
They came in view of the Sacar Hills just as the stars were dimming in the sky.
At the first cold hint of dawn he got up and went in haste under the dimming stars down to the wharves of Serd, resolved only to take the first ship outward bound that would have him.
The overworld shook, trembled, and for a moment Damon lost sight of Varzil, even the great sparkle of his ring dimming out into a faint, distant point of blue.
But the polar differences in personality between mother and son are manifest in the articulation and intensity of gaze, in the dimming and crystallizing of those sinople eyes.
When their second climaxes were concluded and she lay panting upon his chest, he because aware that someone stood over them in the dimming light.
Then shadows moved up from the bruise-black depths, shading more and more of the writhing billows of cumulus and nimbus, finally climbing into the high cirrus and pond-rippled altocumulus, but at first the shadows brought not grayness or darkness, but an infinite palette of subtleties: gleaming gold dimming to bronze, pure white becoming cream and then dimming to sepia and shade, crimson with the boldness of spilled blood slowly darkening to the rust-red of dried blood, then fading to an autumnal tawny russet.
A final sip of Evian and I turn the handle, shrugging, the lights dimming once again.
All around them in the deep-set night, the varicolored explosions popped and sugged, expanding in all directions like fireworks, then dimming the scene, again the blackness.
When the power drunk was very strong, the mist would swirl up in triumphant, flamelike bursts of white, winking motes of light that would dance above the table in triumph for a moment before dimming and dwindling into a drifting, serpentine mist once more.
These collided, then exploded in a sunburst: first gold, then green, then iridescent blue dimming into silver, showering among the marble towers, clinging to the gargoyles and has relief flutings on columns and porticos for a single glorious moment.
Snow lay on the onions now, dimming the blues and greens and golds that sparkled on the picture postcards, but I stood there wondering how a nation which had produced a building of such joyous, magnificent imagination could have come to its latter-day greyness.
She diverted one of the sensors from its focus on the wormhole, dimming the dark purple display to near invisibility.