night

The word “night” means the period of darkness between sunset and sunrise, when the sun is below the horizon. In plain terms, the dark hours of the day, or an evening devoted to something specific.

“Night” is pronounced NYT (/ˈnaɪ̯t/ in IPA).

Here is “night” used in a sentence: “We drove through the night to reach the coast by morning.”

Words with a similar meaning to “night” include evening, dusk, nightfall, sundown, sunset and sleep.

The opposite of “night” — its antonyms — are day, brightness, daylight and light.

“Night” is a noun.

The word “night” comes from Latin. From Old English niht, going back to a very old Proto-Indo-European root also found in Latin nox and Greek nykta — the same ancient word behind "nocturnal" and "equinox.".

“Night” is a very common word in modern English, usually learned at around the A1 level.

Evening is the early part of the day's end, roughly from late afternoon until you go to bed, while it is still socially 'the evening'. Night is the darker stretch that follows, from nightfall through to sunrise. Evening leads into night, and the two overlap around dusk.

The opposite of night is day — the period of light between sunrise and sunset, when the sun sits above the horizon. The pairing is so natural that 'night and day' is also used figuratively to describe two things that could not be more different from each other.

Night is caused by the Earth's rotation. As the planet spins on its axis roughly once every twenty-four hours, the side facing away from the sun falls into shadow. That shadowed half experiences night, while the side facing the sun has day, until rotation brings the change around again.

In everyday terms, night begins at sunset and ends at sunrise, when the sun drops below or climbs above the horizon. Between the two lie the softer stages of twilight — dusk after sunset and dawn before sunrise — so the exact boundary of full darkness shifts with season and location.