[Perh. a shortening of sun-go-down or sun-gate-down (see SUN sb. 13).]
1. The going down of the sun; the time when the sun goes down; also, the glow of sunset; = SUNSET 1, 1 b; the west. Chiefly U.S. and Eng. and Colonial dial.; occas. poet. or rhetorical.
1620. Depos. Bk. Archdeaconries Essex & Colch., 24 Nov., lf. 174 (MS.). About two howers before sunne downe.
1744. W. Black, Jrnl., 1 June, in Pennsylvania Mag. Hist. (1877), I. 408. We staid till near Sun-down at Mr. Strettell’s Villa.
1813. in Spirit Publ. Jrnls., XVII. 168. Solid dames of Boston, go to bed at sun-down, And never lose your way, like the loggerheads of London!
1827. J. F. Cooper, Prairie, ii. Have you been far towards the sun-down, friend?
1850. Tennyson, In Mem., xli. Oft when sundown skirts the moor.
1853. M. Arnold, Scholar Gypsy, iii. Screen’d is this nook … And here till sun-down, Shepherd, will I be.
1858. O. W. Holmes, Aut. Breakf.-t., ix. (1891), 212. The Puritan ‘Sabbath’ … began at ‘sundown’ on Saturday evening.
1873. Morley, Rousseau, II. 315. A mournful sombre figure, looming shadowily in the dark glow of sundown.
1896. Baden-Powell, Matabele Campaign, xi. I signed his warrant, directing that he should be shot at sundown.
2. A hat with a wide brim. U.S.
1888. A. C. Gordon, in Century Mag., Sept., 769/1. Young faces of those days seemed as sweet and winning under wide-brimmed ‘sundowns’ or old-time ‘pokes’ as [etc.].
Hence Sundowner Australian colloq., a tramp who makes a practice of arriving at a station about sundown under the pretence of seeking work, so as to obtain food and a night’s lodging; hence Sundowning, the practice of a sundowner.
1875. Miss Bird, Sandwich Isl., 216. As I rode up to the door, certain obnoxious colonial words, such as ‘sundowners,’ and ‘bummers,’ occurred to me, and I felt myself a ‘sundowner’ when the host came out and asked me to dismount.
1883. J. Bradshaw, New Zealand, iv. 26. Another class of labourers … known by the name of … Sundowners, because they never approach a habitable place before sundown, lest they should be requested to take a further stroll.
1891. E. Kinglake, Australian at H., 133. A certain gang of bushrangers … caused it to be known that tramps and such like were under their special protection…. The effect of this was to make sundowning an intolerable nuisance within the district.
1894. H. Nisbet, Bush Girl’s Rom., 26. Never a tramp was turned away empty-handed unless he was a well-known sundowner.
