Someone who is in a dark mood is unhappy or angry. If we are in a dark place, we are unhappy or having difficult problems. I will finish with metaphors of unhappiness and happiness. The factory was a shining example of good working practice. He was a beacon of light in an evil world. Similarly, we talk about someone or something being a shining example of something good: On the other hand, we use terms such as a shining light or a beacon/ ray of light to describe people or things that are good or give hope, especially in a generally bad environment. They’re involved in various murky business deals. Other adjectives connected with darkness, for example shady, shadowy and murkyare also used to denote dishonesty: We use the word darkto talk about bad actions or characteristics. Now we turn to metaphors of evil and goodness or purity. This evidence did not come to light until after the trial.Īre you able to shed any light on this subject? New facts were brought to light by scholars. We were completely in the dark about what was happening.Ĭonversely, if you bring something to light or if something comes to light, people find out about it, while if you cast/shed/throw light on something, you give people information about it:

They were planning to leave, but they kept it dark. If you keep something dark, you keep it secret, and if you are in the dark about something, you don’t know anything about it:

We’ll start with ignorance and knowledge. There are many common phrases that exemplify this, and this post will look at some of the most common ones. These quotes, from Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, perfectly demonstrate the way darkness and light are used as metaphors in English (and many other languages), with darkness suggesting ignorance, evil and unhappiness and light signifying knowledge, purity and happiness. ‘In the midst of darkness, light persists.’ This detail is, of course, significant: ‘my keen knife’ tells us that Lady Macbeth initially planned to carry out the deed herself, until she persuades her husband to do it instead.‘Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.’ Lady Macbeth wants the smoke from hell to rise up to her on earth and shroud her hand as she takes the knife and kills Duncan she fears that, if she could see what she was doing as she plunged the dagger home, her conscience would cry out for her to leave off (‘Hold, hold!’). The word ‘dunnest’ refers to the dun colour, a sort of dull greyish-brown. ‘Pall’, meanwhile, summons death, as in a funeral pall. The word ‘pall’ foreshadows the ‘blanket of the dark’ two lines later: both were probably suggested by the stage on which Macbeth was first performed (the stage was hung with black drapes when a tragedy was performed), but of course, ‘blanket of the dark’ also suggests the idea of night covering the world at night. This idea of night being ‘thick’ then informs the rest of Lady Macbeth’s speech, which builds on the idea of those spirits being ‘sightless’ or unseen. (This idea of ‘thick night’ will be echoed by Macbeth’s famous line, ‘Light thickens’, later in the play.) Note how ‘thick’, formerly applied to Lady Macbeth’s blood, now refers to the night: it’s as if those spirits are already rushing through the darkness to attend on her, and having thickened the air they will go to work on her blood. Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

Dark thoughts meaning