a. [OE. léohtléas, f. léoht LIGHT sb. + -léas -LESS.] Without light.
1. Receiving no light; unillumined, dark.
c. 1000. Ælfric, Hom. (Th.), II. 504. He … sæde ðæt he wære ʓelæd to leohtleasre stowe.
a. 1340. Hampole, Pr. Consc., 6819. For-þi þat helle es ay lightles, It es cald þe land of myrkenes.
1593. Shaks., Lucr., 1555. Such Deuils steale effects from lightlesse Hell.
1601. W. Parry, Trav. Sir A. Sherley (1863), 4. A man from his birth confined in a dungeon or lightlesse cave.
1819. Crabbe, T. of Hall, III. 275. A lightless closet, in a room Hired at small rate.
1843. Ruskin, Mod. Paint., I. II. III. iii. § 14. Not in her most ponderous and lightless masses will nature ever leave us without some evidence of transmitted sunshine.
1870. Morris, Earthly Par., I. I. 410. Into some nigh lightless prison cast.
1877. Blackie, Wise Men, 102. An owl, a bat, Blindworm, or mole, or any lightless thing.
fig. 1387–8. T. Usk, Test. Love, I. i. (Skeat), l. 20. Thynke on his disease, howe lightles he lyueth, sithe the beames brennende in loue of thin eien arn so bewet.
1790. R. Merry, Laurel of Liberty (ed. 2), 13. All … who drew their profit from the lightless crowd.
2. Giving or shedding no light.
c. 1340. Richard Rolle of Hampole, Prick of Conscience, 4729. Þe son sal be turned in-til mirknes, And þe mone in-til blode, and be lyghtles.
1593. Shaks., Lucr., 4. Lust-breathed Tarqvin … to Colatium beares the lightlesse fire.
1639. Rutherford, Lett. (1881), II. 415. O dim and dark and lightless Sun.
1809. W. Taylor, in Monthly Mag., XXVII. 456. Earth is but earth a dull and lightless body.
1860. Pusey, Min. Proph., 130. There will be … the lightless fire, retaining in darkness the power to burn, but reft of its rays.
1869. Tyndall, Notes Lect. Light, 43. The almost lightless flame of a Bunsen’s burner.
Hence Lightlessness.
1865. Cornh. Mag., Aug., 186. Something horrible there was too in the lightlessness of the red.
1892. W. E. Henley, Song of Sword, Lond. Voluntaries, iii. 16. By a jealous lightlessness oppressed.
