The term “brownout” is defined as a period of reduced voltage due high demand for electric power, resulting in reduced illumination. Technically, during a brownout, the electric supply isn’t cut off, but because of the reduced or fluctuating voltage, lamps don’t give off enough light and electric appliances malfunction. In this sense, the outages we’ve been having lately are not brownouts at all. They are “blackouts,” which means periods of failure of electric power in particular areas, whether planned or inadvertent.
In the Philippines, however, the term “brownout” has become the widely accepted idiom for blackouts. This is probably because the term “blackout” doesn’t seem to apply in general when power failure occurs during the daytime; the darkness isn’t total and the exteriors of buildings remain well-lighted. When power outages happen at nighttime, of course, people become more comfortable describing them as “blackouts.”
A better term for “brownout” is, of course, “power outage.” This term would free us from having to correlate the absence of electricity with the sensory feeling of darkness. But the public’s level of comfort in using “brownout” is quite high, I think, so I doubt if “power outage” could supplant it in the lingua franca within one or two generations.
