Nightfall

How to spell nightfall

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce nightfall

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nightfall mean?

1. nounThe time when daylight fades and darkness begins; dusk.

Nightfall in a sentence

• The hikers wanted to reach the cabin before nightfall.

• The market stalls close at nightfall and reopen at dawn.

Where does nightfall come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound, joining 'night' and 'fall', both of which are ancient Germanic words preserved from Old English. 'Night' descends from Old English niht, related to German Nacht and ultimately to a shared Indo-European root meaning the dark interval between sunset and sunrise. 'Fall' comes from Old English feallan, meaning 'to drop or descend', and here it carries the poetic image of darkness coming down over the land. The compound itself is comparatively recent, appearing in English around the early 1700s, and it parallels older expressions like 'evenfall' and 'the fall of night'. Because both parts are everyday words, the spelling holds no hidden traps, though writers must remember it is a single closed word rather than two.

How the word is built

• night (the dark part of the day)
• fall (the descending or coming down)