Word.ws English Dictionary

fly-by-nights

fly-by-nights is the plural of fly-by-night.

Meaning of fly-by-night

Noun

fly-by-night (plural fly-by-nights)

  1. A creature which flies at night; a nocturnal flier or traveler.
  2. (attributive, often) One who departs or flees at night in order to avoid creditors, law enforcement etc.
    • Do not give your credit card number to that fly-by-night operation.
  3. (derogatory, idiomatic) A person or business that appears and/or disappears rapidly, appearing untrustworthy, or giving an impression of transience.
    • The automobile industry rose almost overnight. Orders poured into the offices of companies already organized; new companies were formed by dozens, capitalized at millions of dollars. Fly-by-night concerns sprang up like mushrooms, flooded the country with stock-selling schemes, established...1917, Rose Wilder Lane, chapter 22, in Henry Ford’s Own Story
  4. (derogatory, idiomatic) A traveling businessman or tradesman.

Questions about fly-by-nights

What is fly-by-nights the plural of?
Fly-by-nights is the plural of fly-by-night.

Words near fly-by-nights in the dictionary

  1. fly-by salute
  2. fly-by salutes
  3. fly-by-night
  4. fly-by-nighter
  5. fly-by-nighters
  6. fly-by-nights
  7. fly-by-wire
  8. fly-bys
  9. fly-catcher
  10. fly-catchers
  11. fly-eyed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fly-by-nights (page history and authors); fly-by-night (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “fly-by-nights.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fly-by-nights. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.