Dim

//dɪm// adj, name, noun, verb, slang

adj, name, noun, verb, slang ·Very common ·Middle school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Dimness. archaic, uncountable

    "All about me the Red Weed clambered among the ruins, writhing to get above me in the dim. Night, the Mother of Fear and Mystery, was coming upon me."

Verb
  1. 1
    To make something less bright. transitive

    "He dimmed the lights and put on soft music."

  2. 2
    become vague or indistinct wordnet
  3. 3
    To become darker. intransitive

    "The lights dimmed briefly when the air conditioning was turned on."

  4. 4
    make dim by comparison or conceal wordnet
  5. 5
    To render dim, obscure, or dark; to make less bright or distinct.

    "a king among his courtiers,[…] who out to dim the lustre of all his attendants"

Show 5 more definitions
  1. 6
    make dim or lusterless wordnet
  2. 7
    To deprive of distinct vision; to hinder from seeing clearly, either by dazzling or clouding the eyes; to darken the senses or understanding of.

    "And with our Sun-bright armour as we march, Weel chaſe the Starrs from heauen, and dim their eies That ſtand and muſe at our admyred armes."

  3. 8
    become dim or lusterless wordnet
  4. 9
    To diminish, dull, or curtail. figuratively

    "All these setbacks had started to dim the hopes of the students."

  5. 10
    switch (a car's headlights) from a higher to a lower beam wordnet
Adjective
  1. 1
    Not bright or colorful.

    "The lighting was too dim for me to make out his facial features."

  2. 2
    Clipping of diminished. abbreviation, alt-of, clipping, not-comparable
  3. 3
    Not smart or intelligent. colloquial

    "He may be a bit dim, but he's not entirely stupid."

  4. 4
    Indistinct, hazy or unclear.

    "His vision grew dimmer as he aged."

  5. 5
    Disapproving, unfavorable: rarely used outside the phrase take a dim view of.
Adjective
  1. 1
    lacking in light; not bright or harsh wordnet
  2. 2
    made dim or less bright wordnet
  3. 3
    slow to learn or understand; lacking intellectual acuity wordnet
  4. 4
    lacking clarity or distinctness wordnet
  5. 5
    offering little or no hope wordnet
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A male given name (from Bashkir Дим) .
  2. 2
    vocative singular of Ди́ма (Díma)(•colloquial) form-of, singular, vocative

Synonyms

All synonyms
blindblurdarkendimmedmurkyshadowy

Example

More examples

"We saw a dim light in the distance."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Middle English dim, dym, from Old English dim, dimm (“dim, dark, gloomy; wretched, grievous, sad, unhappy”), from Proto-West Germanic *dimm, from Proto-Germanic *dimmaz (“dark”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰem- (“to whisk, smoke; obscure”). Compare Faroese dimmur (“dark”), Icelandic dimmur (“dark”) and dimma (“darkness”).

Etymology 2

From Bashkir.

Related phrases

dim and distantdim bulbdim outdim-headeddim-litdim-sighteddim-witted → dim-wittednessnice-but-dimlow lightlower lightstake dim view of

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.