Word.ws English Dictionary

witching hour

Syllables: witch·ing hour/ˈwɪt͡ʃɪŋ ˌaʊə//ˈwɪt͡ʃɪŋ ˌaʊ(ə)ɹ/

witching hour noun: often preceded by the: midnight, when witches and other supernatural beings were thought to be active, and to which bad luck was ascribed; also (generally), the middle of the night, when unfortunate things are thought to be more likely to occur; the dead of night.

Noun

witching hour (plural witching hours)

  1. (literary, poetic) Often preceded by the: midnight, when witches and other supernatural beings were thought to be active, and to which bad luck was ascribed; also (generally), the middle of the night, when unfortunate things are thought to be more likely to occur; the dead of night.
    • I wanted to get home before the witching hour.
    • Tis novv the very vvitching time of night, / VVhen Churchyards yavvne, and hell it ſelfe breakes out / Contagion to this vvorld: […][c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke: […] (Second Quarto), London: […] I[ames] R[oberts] for N[icholas] L[ing] […], published 1604...
  2. (broadly) A time of day, usually in the early evening, when babies and young children are more fretful and likely to cry or fuss.
    • Witching hour: It just might be the most challenging time of the day. That window between dinner and bedtime where kids are wound up, parents want to wind down, and it feels like the longest hour or two ever. And although the term witching hour is most commonly applied to newborns and babies, kids...2022 October 17, Jenn Cox, “Age-by-age Guide to Surviving Witching Hour”, in Kim Shiffman, editor, Today’s Parent, Toronto, Ont.: St. Joseph Communications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original...
  3. (broadly) The final hour of trading each month during which certain stock options expire, leading to a higher trading volume and greater price volatility.
  4. (uncommon) The hour between 3:00 and 3:59 a.m., associated with demons.
    • "Do you know what three a.m. is?" […] "It's called the witching hour. It's the reverse of the holy hour—three p.m.—when Jesus died on the cross.[…]"2008 July 22, Claudia Mair Burney, chapter 4, in The Exorsistah, New York, N.Y.: Pocket Books, →ISBN, page 42
    • The witching hour is three a.m., in mockery of the Trinity and a perversion of the hour of his death.2009 September 22, Rick Yancey, “The Devil’s Manger”, in The Monstrumologist, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster BFYR, →ISBN, page 349

witching hour meaning in Arabic

witching hour in Arabic

midnight, as an hour bringing bad luck — see also midnight
ساعة السحر

Examples of witching hour in a sentence

  • Perhaps, she told herself, this was what they called the witching hour.1982 January 14, Roald Dahl, “The Witching Hour”, in The BFG, London: Jonathan Cape […], published 1985, →ISBN, page 10:
  • Genie let out of the bottle / It is now the witching hour / Murderers, you're murderers / We are not the same as you2003 June 9, “The Gloaming (Softly Open Our Mouths in the Cold)”, in Hail to the Thief, performed by Radiohead, Hollywood, Los Angeles...
  • Witching hour: It just might be the most challenging time of the day.2022 October 17, Jenn Cox, “Age-by-age Guide to Surviving Witching Hour”, in Kim Shiffman, editor, Today’s Parent, Toronto, Ont.: St....
  • By the way, the hour between 3:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. is also known as the witching hour because it's thought that paranormal forces are at their strongest during that time.2020 April 27, Pamela Humphrey, “Momma at Costco (Wind Chime Breaks)”, in My Sister’s Walk with God: The True Stories of a Prophetic...

Forms of witching hour

pluralwitching hours

Origin of witching hour

From witching (“of or pertaining to witchcraft or sorcery, or to witches or sorcerers”, adjective) + hour. Sense 1 (“midnight”) was popularized by the reference to the “witching time of night” in the play Hamlet (written c. 1599–1602; published 1603) by William Shakespeare (1564–1616): see the quotation.

Words formed from witching hour

Questions about witching hour

What does witching hour mean?
Witching hour means often preceded by the: midnight, when witches and other supernatural beings were thought to be active, and to which bad luck was ascribed; also (generally), the middle of the night, when unfortunate things are thought to be more likely to occur; the dead of night.
What is witching hour in Arabic?
Witching hour in Arabic is ساعة السحر. See Witching hour meaning in Arabic.
How do you use witching hour in a sentence?
Perhaps, she told herself, this was what they called the witching hour.
What part of speech is witching hour?
Witching hour is a noun.
How do you pronounce witching hour?
Witching hour is pronounced /ˈwɪt͡ʃɪŋ ˌaʊə/ (UK).
What is the plural of witching hour?
The plural of witching hour is witching hours.

Words near witching hour in the dictionary

  1. witchies
  2. witchiest
  3. witchily
  4. witchiness
  5. witching
  6. witching hour
  7. witching hours
  8. witchingly
  9. witchings
  10. witchish
  11. witchism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: witching hour (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-witching hour.wav, En-us-witching hour.oga.

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