difference between sunset and sundown?

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Is there any difference between sunset and sundown?[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEFL listening discussions: A conversation between two university professors[YSaerTTEW443543]

2

In my humble opinion, no, Torsten.

P.S. Night, all. :smiley:

3

In meaning, no, but it seems “sunset” has an extra use, collocationally:

sunset industries
sunset provision
sunset sectors

And here are the first, most common, sunset noun collocations form the BNC:

  1. SUNSET STRIP
  2. SUNSET COTTAGE
  3. SUNSET INDUSTRIES
  4. SUNSET SONG
  5. SUNSET SKY
  6. SUNSET INDUSTRY
  7. SUNSET HOLE
  8. SUNSET BOULEVARD
  9. SUNSET BEACH
  10. SUNSET RIDGE
  11. SUNSET COURT
  12. SUNSET SLAB
  13. SUNSET VIEWS
  14. SUNSET YELLOW
  15. SUNSET YEARS

Here, the most common with sundown:

‘SUNDOWN SET’
SUNDOWN BEGINNINGS

corpus.byu.edu/bnc/

Here, a similar search using the BYU CORPUS OF AMERICAN ENGLISH:

  1. SUNSET STRIP

  2. SUNSET BOULEVARD

  3. SUNSET PARK

  4. SUNSET DISTRICT

  5. SUNSET MAGAZINE

  6. SUNSET HALL

  7. SUNSET BEACH

  8. SUNSET LIGHT

  9. SUNSET CRUISE

  10. SUNSET CLIMATE

  11. SUNSET DRIVE

  12. SUNSET VIEW

  13. SUNSET GLOW

  14. SUNSET CRUISES

  15. SUNSET PREDICTION

  16. SUNDOWN CAFE

  17. SUNDOWN DAYS

  18. SUNDOWN LOUNGE

  19. SUNDOWN RAMBLERS

  20. SUNDOWN BRAND

  21. SUNDOWN INN

  22. SUNDOWN TREE

  23. SUNDOWN TIMES

  24. SUNDOWN TAVERN

  25. SUNDOWN VITAMINS

  26. SUNDOWN LIFT

  27. SUNDOWN STORM

  28. SUNDOWN SKI

  29. SUNDOWN SERENADE

americancorpus.org/

4

Hi Torsten,

If you turn these into verbs or back into verbs as in: The sun sets and The sun goes down, to me there is an emotional echo in the latter. You find this in expressions like: Don’t let the sun go down on your anger and that very evocative line from the poem to remember the dead from World War 1 by Laurence Binyon:

Alan

5

I’d say that’s because “down” has more negative semantic prosody than “set”.