nightward

nightward adjective: toward night.

Adjective

nightward (not comparable)

Toward night.
- Yet, that you may see I am something suspicious of myself, and do take note of a certain belatedness in me, I am the bolder to sen you some of my nightward thoughts sometime since.1829 [1674], John Milton, Letter to a mentor
- Perhaps, as if clouds that had parted, sending a sunbeam across from the west upon the dark sorrow of the morning, had shut again, inexorably, leaving him still to tread the nightward path under the old, leaden sky.1866, Adeline Dutton Train Whitney, Faith Gartney's Girlhood, page 215
Toward the nightside of a planet.
- nightward flow
- nightward ion flow

nightward (not comparable)

Into the night.
- I follow soon; My day of life wanes nightward fast from noon, And evening lowers.1876, Ebenezer Elliott, Edwin Elliott, The Poetical Works of Ebenezer Elliott, page 120
- For life's primrose, faint and old, Nightward sweep her tides of gold, Grand with glories unrepressed, When the sun is in the west..1887, Adeline Dutton Train Whitney, “Life Colors”, in Daffodils, page 24
On or toward the nightside of a planet.
- Fourth, Knudsen et al. (1982) have shown that the closure of the magnetosheth flow, as evidenced by the ionopause altitude nightward of the terminator, is appropriate for isentropic expansion into the wake of an obstacle.2012, John L. Phillips, David J. McComas, “The Magnetosheath and Magnetotail of Venus”, in C.T. Russell, editor, Venus Aeronomy, page 44
- Out in front of them and as far as he could see nightward, the land slowly crawled away from the desert of the Winderost and rolled back into grassy foothills lined with juniper and pine forest.2015, Jess E. Owen, A Shard of Sun

nightward (uncountable)

The direction of oncoming night.
- No time was lost betweene them, for each minute was fild with store of wit, which passed betweene them, as grounds are with shadowes where people walke: and the longer they discoursed still grew as much more excellent, as they, to nightward seeme longer.1621, Lady Mary Wroth, The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania, page 316
- Then when thy circuit swung to nightward, Night the abhorrèd, night was a new dawning, Celestial dawning Over the ultimate marges of the soul;1897, Francis Thompson, “An Anthem of Earth”, in New Poems, page 84

What of the day could turn their nightward eyes?1907, Henry Dumont, The Vision of a City: And Other Poems, page 24:
Though twilight balms the west, my fears see something brutal in that nightward star.2007, Wayne Clifford, The Exile's Papers, page 94:
The nightward shift of daily times for dinner (i.e., the main, “midday” meal), supper, and sleep by social class is underscored by the view from Napoleon's Paris:2011, Craig Koslofsky, Evening's Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe, page 233:
Nightward ion flow was greatly reduced at solar minimum .1995, Richard O. Fimmel, Pioneering Venus: A Planet Unveiled, page 2:

From night + -ward.

What does nightward mean?: Nightward means toward night.
How do you use nightward in a sentence?: What of the day could turn their nightward eyes?
What part of speech is nightward?: Nightward can be an adjective, an adverb or a noun.

Adapted from Wiktionary: nightward (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: 2026-09-02

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