Word.ws English Dictionary

Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night proper noun: a Christian festival marking the coming of Epiphany and concluding the Twelve Days of Christmas, traditionally falling on the evening of January 5 (i.e., on the eve of Twelfth Day, January 6), but also sometimes defined as falling on the evening of January 6 (i.e., on the evening of Twelfth Day itself).

Proper noun

Twelfth Night (plural Twelfth Nights)

  1. A Christian festival marking the coming of Epiphany and concluding the Twelve Days of Christmas, traditionally falling on the evening of January 5 (i.e., on the eve of Twelfth Day, January 6), but also sometimes defined as falling on the evening of January 6 (i.e., on the evening of Twelfth Day itself).
    • Twelfe Night, Or vvhat you vvill. [title of play]c. 1601–1602, William Shakespeare, Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies, London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
    • Christmas goes out in fine style,—with Twelfth Night. It is a finish worthy of the time. Christmas Day was the morning of the season; New Year's Day the middle of it, or noon; Twelfth Night is the night, brilliant with innumerable planets of Twelfth-cakes. […] Many a pleasant Twelfth Night have we...1840, Leigh Hunt, “XLVIII.—Twelfth Night. A Street Portrait. Shakespeare's Play, Recollections of a Twelfth Night.”, in The Seer; or, Common-places Refreshed. By Leigh Hunt. In Two Parts, volume I...

Examples of Twelfth Night in a sentence

  • Christmas goes out in fine style,—with Twelfth Night.1840, Leigh Hunt, “XLVIII.—Twelfth Night. A Street Portrait. Shakespeare's Play, Recollections of a Twelfth Night.”, in The Seer; or...
  • We even discover in the Saturnalia of the Romans, revels which are almost identical with those of Twelfth Night.1872, Barry Gray, Cakes and Ale at Woodbine; from Twelfth Night to New Year's Day, New York, N.Y.; Cambridge, Mass.: Hurd and Houghton; The...
  • Alton has two Twelfth Night festivals, one in the Christian Hill district's Riverview Park and the other in the Middletown area's Haskell Park.2010, John J. Dunphy, From Christmas to Twelfth Night in Southern Illinois, Charleston, S.C.: The History Press, →ISBN, pages 128 and 130:

Forms of Twelfth Night

pluralTwelfth Nights

Words formed from Twelfth Night

Questions about Twelfth Night

What does Twelfth Night mean?
Twelfth Night means a Christian festival marking the coming of Epiphany and concluding the Twelve Days of Christmas, traditionally falling on the evening of January 5 (i.e., on the eve of Twelfth Day, January 6), but also sometimes defined as falling on the evening of January 6 (i.e., on the evening of Twelfth Day itself).
How do you use Twelfth Night in a sentence?
Christmas goes out in fine style,—with Twelfth Night.
What part of speech is Twelfth Night?
Twelfth Night is a proper noun.

Words near Twelfth Night in the dictionary

  1. twelfth graders
  2. twelfth grades
  3. twelfth man
  4. twelfth men
  5. Twelfth Month
  6. Twelfth Night
  7. Twelfth Night pie
  8. Twelfth Night pies
  9. Twelfth Nights
  10. twelfth pie
  11. twelfth pies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Twelfth 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-Twelfth Night.ogg.

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