Midnight
adj, noun ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 The middle of the night: the sixth temporal hour, equidistant between sunset and sunrise. countable, uncountable
"Thanks to its sonar, the narwhal can remain active even at midnight, unhindered by the darkness."
- 2 12 o'clock at night; the middle of the night wordnet
- 3 Twelve o'clock at night exactly. countable, uncountable
"She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good! / She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood! / They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years, / Till, now, on the stroke of midnight, / Cold, on the stroke of midnight, / The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!"
- 4 Synonym of boxcars (“a pair of sixes”). countable, uncountable
- 1 Utterly dark or black. not-comparable, poetic
"Free and falling, his midnight hair flowed out all around us like a silk canopy."
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"During summer breaks, I ate dinner at midnight."
Etymology
From Middle English midnight, from Old English midniht, from Proto-Germanic *midjanahts (“midnight”), equivalent to mid- + night. Cognate with Saterland Frisian Midnoacht (“midnight”), Old High German mittinaht (“midnight”), Danish midnat (“midnight”), Swedish midnatt (“midnight”), Icelandic miðnætti (“midnight”). Compare also Saterland Frisian Middernoacht (“midnight”), Dutch middernacht (“midnight”), German Mitternacht (“midnight”).
Related phrases
More for "midnight"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.