different between nocturnal vs noctivagant

English

Etymology

From Middle French nocturnal, from Latin nocturnus (“nocturnal, nightly”), from Latin nox (“night”), from Proto-Indo-European *nók?ts (“night”). Cognates include Ancient Greek ??? (núx), Sanskrit ????? (nákti), Old English niht (English night) and Proto-Slavic *no??.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /n?k?t??(?)n?l/
• (US) IPA^(key): /n?k?t?n?l/
• Rhymes: -??(?)n?l

Adjective

nocturnal (comparative more nocturnal, superlative most nocturnal)

1. (of a person, creature, group, or species) Primarily active during the night.

2. (of an occurrence) Taking place at night, nightly.

Antonyms

• diurnal

Coordinate terms

• crepuscular

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

nocturnal (plural nocturnals)

1. A person or creature that is active at night.
2. (historical) A device for telling the time at night, rather like a sundial but read according to the stars.

   Synonym: star clock

   • 2015, David Wootton, The Invention of Science, Penguin 2016, p. 188:

     A rather different instrument was the nocturnal: it enabled you to tell the time at night, provided you knew the date, from the position of the stars in the constellation of the Great Bear, which rotate around the Pole Star.

Old French

Adjective

nocturnal m (oblique and nominative feminine singular nocturnale)

1. nocturnal

References

• Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IX^e au XV^e siècle (1881) (nocturnal)

English

Etymology

From Late Latin noctivagans, from noctivagare, from Latin nocti- (“night”) + participle form of vagari (“to wander”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /n?k?t?v???nt/

Adjective

noctivagant (comparative more noctivagant, superlative most noctivagant)

1. Walking or wandering in the nighttime, nightwandering. [from 17th c.]
   • 1823, James Hogg, The Three Perils of Woman; Or, Love, Leasing and Jealousy: A Series of Domestic Scottish Tales, E. Duyckinck (1823), p. 145:

     "'[…] I therefore think, Sarah, that the incommensurability of the crime with the effect, completely warrants the supersaliency of this noctivagant delinquent.'"

   • 1967, Walter Hamilton, Parodies of the Works of English & American Authors, Johnson Reprint Corporation (1967), p. 195:

     "Over the city, the suburb, the slum / He rambled from pillar to post, / And backward and forward, observant, though dumb, / As a fleetly noctivagant ghost."

   • 1982, TC Boyle, Water Music, Penguin 2006, p. 363:

     Unhappily, we lost the big fellow, Smirke, to noctivagant predators some days back [...].

   • 2003, Alan Wall, The School of Night, St. Martin's Press (2003), p. 223–224:

     "Not merely nocturnal but noctivagant, a nightwalker, a prowler, a nomad of the midnight streets, attempting to abolish the distinction between the light that comes from outside and the sort that shines within."

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:noctivagant.

Translations

See also

• mundivagant
• solivagant

References

• "noctivagant" in A Complete Dictionary of the English Language, Both with Regard to Sound and Meaning, Thomas Sheridan, 1790.