Word.ws English Dictionary

nightlight

/ˈnaɪtˌlaɪt/

nightlight noun: a small, dim light or lamp left on overnight.

Noun

nightlight (countable and uncountable, plural nightlights)

  1. (countable) A small, dim light or lamp left on overnight.
    • She had brought in with her the night-light that had been burning outside her door. She blew it out.1925, D. H. Lawrence, chapter XVIII, in Louis L. Martz, editor, Quetzalcoatl, New York: New Directions, published 1998, page 310
    • They made you give up / your nightlight / and your teddy / and your thumb.1974, Anne Sexton, “The Fury of Overshoes”, in The Complete Poems, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, published 1981, page 372
  2. (uncountable) Light that shines at night, such as moonlight or starlight.
    • The floor-cloth deadened his footsteps as he moved in that direction through the obscurity, which was broken only by the faintest reflected night-light from without.1895, Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, Part Six, Chapter III
    • […] the man held up two small objects faintly twinkling in the nightlight;1924, Herman Melville, chapter 12, in Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co.

Forms of nightlight

pluralnightlights
alternative formnight light

Origin of nightlight

From night + light.

Words formed from nightlight

  • nightlighter

Questions about nightlight

What does nightlight mean?
Nightlight means a small, dim light or lamp left on overnight.
What part of speech is nightlight?
Nightlight is a noun.
How do you pronounce nightlight?
Nightlight is pronounced /ˈnaɪtˌlaɪt/ (US).
What is the plural of nightlight?
The plural of nightlight is nightlights.

Words near nightlight in the dictionary

  1. nightlies
  2. nightlife
  3. nightlifer
  4. nightlifers
  5. nightlifes
  6. nightlight
  7. nightlighters
  8. nightlighting
  9. nightlights
  10. nightlike
  11. nightline

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nightlight (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-nightlight.ogg.

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