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NIGHTFALL
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The time of day immediately following sunset
Example:
they finished before the fall of night
Synonyms:
crepuscle; crepuscule; dusk; evenfall; fall; gloam; gloaming; nightfall; twilight
Classified under:
Nouns denoting time and temporal relations
Hypernyms ("nightfall" is a kind of...):
hour; time of day (clock time)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "nightfall"):
night (a shortening of nightfall)
Holonyms ("nightfall" is a part of...):
eve; even; evening; eventide (the latter part of the day (the period of decreasing daylight from late afternoon until nightfall))
Context examples:
Occurring between nightfall and dawn.
(Overnight, NCI Thesaurus)
It was too good to lose, but by nightfall I was exhausted.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
Seamen would tell us how they had left London and been engaged ere nightfall, or sailed out of Portsmouth and been yard-arm to yard-arm before they had lost sight of St. Helen’s light.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
It came in this way, he said, sitting down once more: I was passing this way, hoping to reach Lymington ere nightfall when I came on this red-headed knave seated even where we are sitting now.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
In fact, toward nightfall of the third day it increased a trifle and something more.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
There came a plump of rain towards mid-day and the breeze died down, but it freshened again before nightfall, and Goodwin Hawtayne veered his sheet and held head for the south. Next morning they had passed Belle Isle, and ran through the midst of a fleet of transports returning from Guienne.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The six boats, spreading out fan-wise from the schooner until the first weather boat and the last lee boat were anywhere from ten to twenty miles apart, cruised along a straight course over the sea till nightfall or bad weather drove them in.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
Spies had been sent out in the morning, and returned after nightfall to say that the King of Spain was encamped some fourteen miles off in the direction of Burgos, having with him twenty thousand horse and forty-five thousand foot.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The hunting was perilous; yet the boats, lowered day after day, were swallowed up in the grey obscurity, and were seen no more till nightfall, and often not till long after, when they would creep in like sea-wraiths, one by one, out of the grey.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
