a. Also 6–7 Cym-, 7 Cymm-, Cim-. [f. L. Cimmeri-us (Gr. Κιμμέριος) pertaining to the Cimmerii + -AN.]
Of or belonging to the Cimmerii, a people fabled by the ancients to live in perpetual darkness. Hence, proverbially used as a qualification of dense darkness, gloom, or night, or of things or persons shrouded in thick darkness.
1581. W. Warren, Nurcerie of Names, D ij. Her other workes are liker wronges, and darke Cymerian shade.
1598. Marston, Pygmal., Sat. II. 142. That such Cymerian darknes should inuolve A quaint conceit, that he could not resolue.
1632. Milton, L’Allegro, 10. There under ebon shades … In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
1781. Gibbon, Decl. & F., III. 206, note. The proverbial expression of Cimmerian darkness was originally borrowed from the description of Homer (in the eleventh book of the Odyssey), which he applies to a remote and fabulous country on the shores of the ocean.
1801. Helen M. Williams, Sk. Fr. Rep., I. xviii. 229. The Cimmerian night of the middle ages.
1880. ‘E. Kirke,’ Garfield, 15. A dense fog … shrouded the lonely mountain in Cimmerian darkness.
Hence Cimmerianism, dense darkness (of ignorance, etc.); † Cimmerianize v. trans., to make totally dark.
1630. J. Taylor (Water P.), Peace of France, Wks. III. 111. Ded. The Leathean Den of obliuious Cimerianisme.
1824. Blackw. Mag., XVI. 292/1. The awful cimmerianism of the philologer and classical critic of the Edinburgh Review.
1600. Tourneur, Trans. Metamorph. (1878), 187. This blacke Cymerianized night.
