• n. 夜晚，晚上；黑暗，黑夜
• adj. 夜晚的，夜間的

來自PIE*nekwt,夜晚，詞源同nocturnal,equinox.

night

night: [OE] Night is the English member of an ancient Indo-European family of ‘night’-words, represented in virtually all the modern European languages. The ancestral form was *nokt-, and from this have come Greek núx, Latin nox (source of English nocturnal [15] and nocturne [19], and forerunner of French nuit, Italian notte, and Spanish noche), Welsh nos, Latvian nakts, and Russian noch’. The Germanic descendant of *nokt- was *nakht-, source of modern German and Dutch nacht, Swedish natt, Danish nat, and English night. The only exception to the general European picture is modern Irish oidhche ‘night’, a word of unknown origin.
=> nocturnal

night (n.)

Old English niht (West Saxon neaht, Anglian n?ht, neht) "night, darkness;" the vowel indicating that the modern word derives from oblique cases (genitive nihte, dative niht), from Proto-Germanic *nakht- (cognates: Old Saxon and Old High German naht, Old Frisian and Dutch nacht, German Nacht, Old Norse natt, Gothic nahts).

The Germanic words are from PIE *nekwt- "night" (cognates: Greek nuks "a night," Latin nox, Old Irish nochd, Sanskrit naktam "at night," Lithuanian naktis "night," Old Church Slavonic nosti, Russian noch', Welsh henoid "tonight"), according to Watkins, probably from a verbal root *neg- "to be dark, be night." For spelling with -gh- see fight.

The fact that the Aryans have a common name for night, but not for day (q.v.), is due to the fact that they reckoned by nights. [Weekley]

Compare German Weihnachten "Christmas." In early times, the day was held to begin at sunset, so Old English monanniht "Monday night" was the night before Monday, or what we would call Sunday night. The Greeks, by contrast, counted their days by mornings.

To work nights preserves the Old English genitive of time. Night shift is attested from 1710 in the sense of "garment worn by a woman at night" (see shift (n.1)); meaning "gang of workers employed after dark" is from 1839. Night soil "excrement" (1770) is so called because it was removed (from cesspools, etc.) after dark. Night train attested from 1838. Night life "habitual nocturnal carousing" attested from 1852.

1. Two men were helping police with their inquiries at Salisbury last night.

兩名男子昨天夜里在索爾茲伯里接受了警方盤問。

來自柯林斯例句

2. That was the first time Elliot stayed out all night.

那是埃利奧特第一次徹夜未歸。

來自柯林斯例句

3. Last night he was being held in solitary confinement in Douglas jail.

昨晚他被單獨監禁在道格拉斯的監獄里。

來自柯林斯例句

4. Last night we hitched the horse to the cart and moved here.

昨晚我們套上馬車，拉著東西搬到了這里。

來自柯林斯例句

5. I suggest we gather enough firewood to last the night.

我建議大家撿足夠多的木柴來撐過這一晚。

來自柯林斯例句