Nocturnal

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /nɒkˈtɜː(ɹ).nəl/

Definitions

1. Active or occurring during the night rather than the day
2. Primarily active or functional at night rather than during daylight hours
3. Relating to or characterized by activity during the night instead of the daytime hours

Etymology: The Latin root is one of the oldest in the family: "nox" meant "night", and it is a close relative of the English word "night" itself, both descending from the same ancient stem. Ancient Greek "nux" and Sanskrit "nakti" share that ancestry, so the word has been carrying the idea of darkness across more than a dozen centuries of languages before it reached English. The adjective took shape in Latin as "nocturnus", and Late Latin extended it to "nocturnalis", which passed into Middle French as "nocturnal". English borrowed it from French, so the word arrived with a Latinate polish even though its core sound is shared with the native English "night". The pairing is a useful reminder that English has two routes to the same idea: the inherited Germanic "night" and the borrowed Latin-derived "nocturnal".

Synonyms: nightly, evening, dark, nighttime, crepuscular

Antonyms: diurnal, daytime, morning, sunny, bright