sunlessness

Noun

1. The state or characteristic of being without the sun or sunshine.
   • In Penzance and Falmouth, the total eclipse will last for 2 minutes 2 seconds. The longest period of sunlessness will be in Romania, at 2 mins 23 seconds. - 1999 August 7, Tim Radford, “Light and shade”, in Guardian,...
2. Dreariness, joylessness.
   • The honor she paid the honesty of these women helped her much to pity the sunlessness of their existence, and the poor end for which they lived. - 1882, George MacDonald, chapter 7, in Weighed and Wanting:
   • Given such an aware sensibility, they move, it seems to me, marginally past the sunlessness of a great deal of the wasteland literature of this century, and past the literature of despair of our own day. - 1986,...