A friend of mine had this request:
Alright so I was sitting at this table with a kerosene lamp, and it
was a little too bright. Watch out! So I turned a little knobbly
thing to lower the flame, and then had the vaguest recollection that
there was some verb for this precise action, the dimming of an oil
lamp, but a week of pondering and now some searches for "list of lamp
actions" have not flushed out any foxes. Can anyone toss me some
helps on this one? I think it may be an archaic word that one would
find in Charlotte Bronte or Laura Ingalls Wilder, also maybe the kind
of word that the Decemberists or Joanna Newsom would bandy about to
show they mean nineteenth-century business.
I briefly checked the OED online and some other sources (well, Google) but didn't find anything sufficiently specific. Does anyone know if this word actually exists?
Best Answer
Trim
Here's the ngram graph for "trim your lamps," "trim the lamps," "trim your lamp," and "trim the lamp."