Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Being without sunlight; dark or overcast.
  • adjective Gloomy; cheerless.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Destitute of the sun or of its direct rays; dark; shadowed.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Destitute or deprived of the sun or its rays; shaded; shadowed.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Without the sun or sunshine; shaded; shadowed.
  • adjective figuratively Dreary, cheerless.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective filled or abounding with clouds

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

sun + -less

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Examples

  • "This system is a first clear step that has to grow," Van Kooten says, but more research is needed and people need to get used to the idea of sunless, landless agriculture.

    The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com The Huffington Post News Editors 2011

  • An alternative to sun bathing is known as sunless tanning.

    EzineArticles 2010

  • He retired into himself, and there, in a kind of sunless, motionless void, became still more just, still more humane.

    The Buried Temple Maurice Maeterlinck 1905

  • Down to a sunless sea, Elizabeth repeated to herself as she strode eastward along the footpath towards Hinkley from the fabled settlements of East Quantoxhead and Kilve.

    Margaret Drabble | Trespassing 2011

  • She had once thought those lines referred to the river Axe, the sacred river that ran through the subterranean chambers and caverns and stalactites of the Cheddar gorge, but she now saw that the Alph of Xanadu was the Severn, and that the sunless sea was Coleridge's prophetic vision of the pewter post-nuclear wasteland of this estuary, spreading out westwards in the post-nuclear future towards the metallic fish-free Atlantic.

    Margaret Drabble | Trespassing 2011

  • Canyon, and the feet of men churned the wet sunless earth into mire and bog-hole.

    CHAPTER 3 2010

  • The pale light of the short sunless day was beginning to fade, when a faint far cry arose on the still air.

    The Trail of Meat 2010

  • In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure dome decree Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea … EDF, of course, was engaged in that characteristically twenty-first century French endeavour, the development of nuclear power.

    Margaret Drabble | Trespassing 2011

  • Lots of getting soaked on what looks like a cold, sunless day.

    Tallulah Morehead: Survivor 21: Infants vs Senior Citizens: They Baffle Science! Tallulah Morehead 2010

  • Although I was never was tempted to mimick Mexican women's heavy makeup, particularly the dark lip liner and eye makeup, I still haven't given up the spray on sunless tan though.

    how to "pass" for a Mexican 2009

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