Dreams and Discoveries
Times of day, and opposites
Learn words for the times of day, and their opposites.
'Paper Boats' uses dawn, night and midnight to mark the passing of a day. English has many more time-of-day words. Let's sort them!
| Part of day | Words |
|---|---|
| morning | dawn (first light), daybreak, sunrise, sunup, forenoon (between morning and noon) |
| midday | noon (12 o'clock), midday, noonday, noontime |
| evening | twilight (soft half-light after sunset), dusk (a bit darker), nightfall (when night arrives), sunset, sundown |
| night | midnight (12 at night), night-time (the whole dark stretch) |
Easy to remember: some come in mirror pairs:
| Start of day | End of day |
|---|---|
| sunrise | sunset |
| sunup | sundown |
| daybreak | nightfall |
Learn one, and you get the other!
Now the poem's opposites, which your book asks you to match:
| Word | Opposite |
|---|---|
| dawn | dusk (the two ends of daylight) |
| strange (unfamiliar) | ordinary |
| launch (set going) | halt |
| bulging (swelling out) | shrinking |
| float | sink |
| lading (loading cargo) | emptying |
Float and sink: the paper boats could have sunk, but in the poem they never do. They float on and on!
Dawn, noon, dusk and midnight anchor the day — and sunrise/sunset, sunup/sundown, daybreak/nightfall come in pairs.
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