Nightcore
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A plunderphonic style of music based on taking an original track and speeding it up, increasing its pitch. Usually associated with visuals of anime-style artwork. uncountable
"Mofo's [motherfucker's] tagging nearly everything Nightcore : it's not Nightcore! Maybe if you knew about hardcore you'd know that in the first place. <_<"
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"Mofo's [motherfucker's] tagging nearly everything Nightcore : it's not Nightcore! Maybe if you knew about hardcore you'd know that in the first place. <_<"
Etymology
From night + core (“key part of a thing”) via Nightcore, the name of the Norwegian duo that created the genre. They explained their name by saying "we are the core of the night, so you'll dance all night long." Around 2008, others started making their own songs in the same style and used the term nightcore not to refer music made by the duo, but to the new genre of music as a whole. As this usage spread and knowledge of the original duo faded, the term was reanalyzed as night + -core in the same style as other music genres like metalcore, rapcore, etc.
Related phrases
More for "nightcore"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.