What does "night-raven" mean?

A bird active at night, sometimes identified with a specific species such as a night owl or nightjar, and sometimes seen as a separate animal in its own right.

Night-raven

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
A bird active at night, sometimes identified with a specific species such as a night owl or nightjar, and sometimes seen as a separate animal in its own right.
"sad Horrour with grim hew, / Did alwayes sore, beating his yron wings; / And after him Owles and Night-rauens flew, / The hatefull messengers of heauy things [...]."

Example

More examples

"sad Horrour with grim hew, / Did alwayes sore, beating his yron wings; / And after him Owles and Night-rauens flew, / The hatefull messengers of heauy things [...]."

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.