different between overnight vs nocturnal

English

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English overnyght, from Old English ofer niht (“through the night, overnight”), equivalent to over +? night.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??v?(?)?na?t/
• Rhymes: -a?t

Alternative forms

• overnite (informal)

Adverb

overnight (not comparable)

1. During or throughout the night, especially during the evening or night just past.
   • There was also hairdressing: hairdressing, too, really was hairdressing in those times — no running a comb through it and that was that. It was curled, frizzed, waved, put in curlers overnight, waved with hot tongs; […].
2. (figuratively) In a very short (but unspecified) amount of time.
   • 2012, Christoper Zara, Tortured Artists: From Picasso and Monroe to Warhol and Winehouse, the Twisted Secrets of the World's Most Creative Minds, part 1, chapter 1, 27:

     Overnight, the vivacious young actress became a caricature, a relic of the previous decade, whose hard-partying socialite image seemed frivolous and out of touch amid the ensuing years of the Great Depression.

Translations

Adjective

overnight (not comparable)

1. Occurring between dusk and dawn.

2. Complete before the next morning.
3. Of an activity or event in which participants stay overnight.

Translations

Verb

overnight (third-person singular simple present overnights, present participle overnighting, simple past and past participle overnighted)

1. (intransitive) To stay overnight; to spend the night. [from 19th c.]
   • 2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin 2003, p. 128:

     His visits to Paris (which he had not allowed his son to visit until he was a teenager) became less frequent too: he never over-nighted there, for example, after 1744.

2. (transitive, US) To send something for delivery the next day. [from 20th c.]

Translations

Noun

overnight (plural overnights)

1. Items delivered or completed overnight.

2. An overnight stay, especially in a hotel or other lodging facility.
3. (television, in the plural) Viewership ratings for a television show that are published the morning after it is broadcast, and may be revised later on.
   • 2000, Dorothy C. Swanson, Story of Viewers For Quality TV: From Grassroots to Prime Time

     Word spread that Barney was on his way out to the location and that the Nielsen overnights had been terrific, or why else would he come.

   • 2006, A. D. Brown, News-Daze (page 3)

     The TV critic had the results of the June rating survey by Arbitron and Nielsen. […] He has the hard numbers on the June book plus the recent Nielsen overnights.

4. (obsolete) The fore part of the previous night; yesterday evening.

Translations

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)