cockshut time
An old British term for evening twilight — the quiet, dim window of time between sunset and full dark when the light turns grey and soft.
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Born ~1550 · no dated citations yetDefinitions
An old British term for evening twilight — the quiet, dim window of time between sunset and full dark when the light turns grey and soft. Cockshut time was when woodcocks and other birds would fly low through the glades and could be caught in nets strung between trees; it was a specific, practical hour for rural folk. The phrase has since faded from everyday use but lives on in poetry, historical fiction, and anyone who loves a good archaic turn of phrase for the golden hour.
The village settled into an easy quiet at cockshut time, with only the distant bleating of sheep breaking the dusk.
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(UK, dated) Evening twilight; nightfall.
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🇬🇧About British & Irish slang slang
UK and Irish slang — Cockney, Scouse, Geordie, Yorkshire, Glaswegian, Brummie, Welsh, West Country, plus Irish English. Centuries of regional dialects feeding into modern British and Irish street talk.
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The time in the evening just before dusk.
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A Southern US and Appalachian dialect expression for dusk — the period just after sunset when the sky dims but full dark hasn't arrived yet. The term is particularly associated with Gullah communities of the coastal Southeast. It has a poetic, doubling quality, pairing two near-synonyms to evoke the gradual fading of daylight. While rarely used today outside heritage or literary contexts, it captures an atmospheric moment with vivid economy.
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(UK, slang) The time of closing at a public house.
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(UK, _, dialectal, West Country) Twilight; dusk; crepusculum.