Cfxtrjtrk

Is it correct grammar to say "Dark of the Moon"?

Should it not be either

• "Dark (insert word here) of the Moon" if there is some dark thing of the moon, or


• "Darkness of the Moon" if the moon itself is the "dark" being described.

Example uses according to Wikipedia:

• Transformers: Dark of the Moon, a 2011 film, third in the Transformers series


• Transformers: Dark of the Moon (video game), a video game based on the 2011 film


• Dark of the Moon (play), a play by American playwrights William Berney and Howard Richardson


• "Dark of the Moon" (The Unit), an episode of the television series The Unit


• Dark of the Moon: Poems of Fantasy and the Macabre, a 1947 poetry anthology edited by August Derleth


• Dark of the Moon, a 1968 mystery novel by John Dickson Carr


• Dark of the Moon, a 2005 novel by John Sandford


• Dark of the Moon, a 2009 paranormal romance novel, third in the Dark Guardian series

Dark in this phrase is used as a noun in the sense of "night." Consider that if we could see the moon at this time, we would be looking at its night side. The "dark of the moon" is nighttime on the moon.

While you could say the darkness of the moon, that would imply that the moon was causing darkness, which I suppose it does during a solar eclipse.

The examples you give in your comment—"Soft of the pillow," "Hard of the rock," "White of the fence"—sound funny because soft, hard, and white are all adjectives rather than nouns, so they don't fit this pattern. It would be odd to say the pillow's soft, the rock's hard, the fence's white, because we are waiting for the noun that those words describe: the pillow's soft caress, the rock's hard surface, the fence's white picket.

More appropriate comparisons would be "The Night of the Were-Rabbit," "Dawn of the Dead," or "Dark of the Sun." These are all "grammatical" phrases. They could equally be expressed as the were-rabbit's night, the dead's dawn, the sun's dark, although they sound less nice that way.

It's an usual expression/image, and so needs a bit more interpretation than other phrases. But there's nothing ungrammatical about it per se. If you can talk about something being "the dark", and you can talk about "the X of the moon", then it's plausible to talk about "the dark of the moon".

Consider also that part of the idea of the expression is a play on words, contrasting with e.g. "(by) the light of the moon", which would be a more common expression.

Or put another way: it's no less grammatical than "the cold of the staircase" or "the dry of the waterwheel".

One can see by the Google Ngram below that the phrase the full of the moon appears to have been originally more common than the dark of the moon. Before 1800, the new of the moon was much more common than the dark of the moon as the opposite of the full of the moon (although this last phrase was much more common). These expressions are idioms, and are perfectly acceptable English.

As far as grammar goes, it's not clear whether analyzing the grammar of idioms is a useful exercise—you could say that full, new, and dark are nouns, but only when used for this specific purpose. These expressions have been used idiomatically for a long time.

We also have the first quarter of the moon and the second, third, or last quarter of the moon.

I think the grammar is correct: if Dark of the Moon literally refers to the dark phase of the moon:

This would be the time during the monthly cycle (from Full Moon to the next Full Moon) when it's close to the Sun and isn't seen at night, so it doesn't contribute light to the night sky.

It would be used in a more allegorical sense to mean a darker phase of something, and it's likely astrological interpretations would have more appeal than astronomical.

As far as I know, you are correct: "Dark of the moon" is not common, although I believe it is technically correct since "dark" is also a noun ("afraid of the dark"). I think the usual expression is "Dark side of the moon" or, perhaps more ominously, "Darkness of the moon".

"Dark of the moon" is a unique phrase, that is, specific to talking about the moon. In other words, the way the word "dark" is used to describe the moon isn't the same as it would used to describe any other object.

There are a couple of different meanings for this phrase. One meaning of "dark of the moon" is an astrological term, relating to a time during a "dark moon," the time when the moon is dark in the night sky. In astrology, this time period is said to have a powerful effect on human spirit, and the nature of this effect is why the phrase "dark of the moon" might often be associated with certain themes of fiction, especially "dark" or "mysterious" fiction.

Another is to mean the "dark side of the moon" or the "far side of the moon." Although the "dark side" and "far side" of the moon aren't actually the same thing (the part of the moon that's dark changes, but the part that faces Earth does not) it's nonetheless common for people to use "dark side of the moon" when they mean "far side of the moon." In Transformers: Dark of the Moon, for example, the plot begins with robots crashing into the far side of Earth's moon.

I was looking specifically for the phrase, ..."dark o' the moon"...As it relates to the SOE/OSS of WW II. I figured out my answer. It would be the best time of the month for sabotage related operations. -30-