a. [f. SUN sb. + -LESS.] Destitute of the sun or of the sun’s rays; not illumined by the sun; dark or dull through absence of sunlight.
1589. Fleming, Virg. Georg., I. 6. Vnlesse thou wilt cut or plash away with bill The shadie boughs of sunlesse soile.
1697. Dryden, Æneid, III. 267. Three starless Nights the doubtful Navy strays Without Distinction, and three Sunless Days.
1788. Cowper, Lett. to W. Bagot, 19 March. Sunless skies and freezing blasts.
1829. Scott, Anne of G., xv. The sunless waves appeared murmuring for their victim.
1842. Macaulay, Armada, 42. The rugged miners poured to war from Mendip’s sunless caves.
1876. R. Bridges, Growth of Love, lxvii. A sunless and half-hearted summer.
1880. Meredith, Tragic Com., vi. (1892), 86. Sunless rose the morning.
fig. 1850. Blackie, Æschylus, I. 37. Ofttimes we sorrowed from a sunless soul.
1864. Tennyson, Aylmer’s F., 357. I lived for years a stunted sunless life.
b. nonce-use. Existing without the sun.
1633. P. Fletcher, Purple Isl., VI. ix. The Sunne lesse starres, these lights the Sunne distain.
Hence Sunlessness, the condition of being sunless; absence of the sun.
1856. Chamb. Jrnl., 20 Dec., 390/1. Their blood scurvy-filled by the four months’ sunlessness.
1898. G. W. Steevens, With Kitchener to Khartum, 137. Another twelve hours of sunlessness.
