overnight
/əʊvə(ɹ)ˈnaɪt/
overnight adverb: during or throughout the night, especially during the evening or night just past.
Adverb
overnight (not comparable)
- During or throughout the night, especially during the evening or night just past.
- Let it run overnight and we'll check on it in the morning.
- They delivered the package overnight.
- In a very short (but unspecified) amount of time.
- The change seemed to happen overnight.
- Overnight, the vivacious young actress became a caricature, a relic of the previous decade, whose hard-partying socialite image seemed frivolous and out of touch amid the ensuing years of the Great Depression.2012, Christoper Zara, Tortured Artists: From Picasso and Monroe to Warhol and Winehouse, the Twisted Secrets of the World's Most Creative Minds, part 1, chapter 1, 27
Adjective
overnight (not comparable)
- Occurring between dusk and dawn.
- The overnight ferry docked at 10 a.m.
- Her stepfather, Duane Childers, was also asleep after working an overnight shift, […]2026 August 6, Nicholas Muhoro, “An Ohio Teen Vanished During a One-Mile Drive in 1994. Her Locked Car Was Found Hours Later”, in Skip Boring, archived from the original on 06 Aug 2026
- Complete before the next morning.
- Don't expect overnight delivery.
- Federal Express handled 225 million overnight and second-day packages, cornering a 50-percent share of the entire domestic overnight market[…].1988 August 22, Julie Webber, “The Fastest Data Delivery: Three Services Provide Quick Information”, in Info World, volume 10, number 34, page S10
- For which participants stay overnight.
- They sent their kids to overnight camp.
- We went on an overnight ski trip.
Verb
overnight (third-person singular simple present overnights, present participle overnighting, simple past and past participle overnighted)
- To stay overnight; to spend the night.
- His visits to Paris (which he had not allowed his son to visit until he was a teenager) became less frequent too: he never over-nighted there, for example, after 1744.2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 128
- To send something for delivery the next day.
- We can overnight you the documents for signature.
Noun
overnight (plural overnights)
- An item delivered or completed overnight.
- Have you looked at the overnights yet?
- An overnight stay, especially in a hotel or other lodging facility.
- Some will also have to work less coveted schedules like overnights and weekends just to start building their career and demo tape.Vault Career Guide to Journalism and Information Media (page 70)
- Viewership ratings for a television show that are published the morning after it is broadcast, and may be revised later on.
- Word spread that Barney was on his way out to the location and that the Nielsen overnights had been terrific, or why else would he come.2000, Dorothy C. Swanson, Story of Viewers For Quality TV: From Grassroots to Prime Time
- The TV critic had the results of the June rating survey by Arbitron and Nielsen. […] He has the hard numbers on the June book plus the recent Nielsen overnights.2006, A. D. Brown, News-Daze, page 3
- The fore part of the previous night; yesterday evening.
- Pardon me, madam:
If I had given you this at overnight,
She might have been o'erta'enc. 1604–1605 (date written), William Shakespeare, “All’s Well, that Ends Well”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
- Pardon me, madam:
overnight meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali
overnight in Hindi
- throughout the night
- रात भर rāt bhar
overnight in Tamil
- இரவு முழுவதும்
overnight in Urdu
- overnight
- راتوں رات
overnight in Bengali
- overnight
- রাতারাতি ratarati
More languagesFewer languages
- overnight in Kannada
- ಇರುಳು ನಡೆಸಿದ, ಒಂದಿರುಳಿನ, ಇದ್ದಕ್ಕಿದ್ದಂತೆ, ಹಿಂದಿನ ರಾತ್ರಿಯಲ್ಲಿ
- overnight in Gujarati
- રાતોરાત
- overnight in Odia
- ରାତାରାତି, ରାତିରାତି
- overnight in Arabic
- بَيْنَ لَيْلةٍ وَضُحاهَا bayna laylatin waḍuḥāhā
- overnight in Vietnamese
- qua đêm
Examples of overnight in a sentence
- […]then put the glass into a damp cellar, on sand, and the gold will overnight shoot into crystals, which take out, and let them dissolve again in distilled vinegar[…].1765 February, “The Art of Guilding”, in The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, volume 36, London: John Hinton, page 81:
- It was curled, frizzed, waved, put in curlers overnight, waved with hot tongs;[…].1977, Agatha Christie, chapter 4, in An Autobiography, part II, London: Collins, →ISBN:
- Overnight, as the storm bore down on urban flood zones, city officials ramped up emergency spaces to shelter thousands more people, mostly in public schools and colleges.2012 November 20, Nina Bernstein, “Storm Bared a Lack of Options for the Homeless in New York”, in New York Times:
- "You can't overnight turn everyone into an expert on everything. [...]."2021 December 29, Paul Stephen, “Rail's accident investigators”, in RAIL, number 947, page 32:
Forms of overnight
| Adverb | |
|---|---|
| alternative form | o'ernight |
| alternative form | over night |
| alternative form | overnite |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | overnights |
| present participle | overnighting |
| past participle | overnighted |
| past | overnighted |
| Noun | |
| plural | overnights |
Origin of overnight
Inherited from Middle English overnyght, from Old English ofer niht (“through the night, overnight”), equivalent to over + night. Verbal use (late 19th c.) may have been influenced by German übernachten (16th c.), though it could also have developed independently. Compare also Dutch overnachten (“to overnight”), Middle Low German ȫvernachten (“to overnight”), West Frisian oernachtsje (“to overnight”), Saterland Frisian uurnoachtje (“to overnight”).
Words formed from overnight
Phrases with overnight
Words that rhyme with overnight
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- knight
- slight
- Dwight
- height
- sight
- night
- sprite
- fight
- parasite
- site
- alight
- smite
- all right
- blight
- might
- mite
- skite
- cite
- indite
- lite
- outright
- plight
- bight
- excite
- ignite
- invite
- uptight
- wight
- accite
- alright
- benight
- bewrite
- blite
- copyright
- despite
- dight
- disunite
- finite
- flite
- hight
- incite
- recite
- relight
- rewrite
- sleight
- spite
- spright
- wite
Questions about overnight
- What does overnight mean?
- Overnight means during or throughout the night, especially during the evening or night just past.
- What is overnight in Hindi?
- Overnight in Hindi is रात भर (rāt bhar). See Overnight meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use overnight in a sentence?
- […]then put the glass into a damp cellar, on sand, and the gold will overnight shoot into crystals, which take out, and let them dissolve again in distilled vinegar[…].
- What part of speech is overnight?
- Overnight can be an adverb, an adjective, a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce overnight?
- Overnight is pronounced /əʊvə(ɹ)ˈnaɪt/.
Words near overnight in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: overnight (page history and authors); overnight (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); راتوں رات (Urdu) (page history and authors); রাতারাতি (Bengali) (page history and authors); overnight (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); overnight (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); overnight (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-overnight.wav, en-us-overnight.ogg.
Cite this entry: “overnight.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/overnight. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.