Nightingale

How to spell nightingale

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce nightingale

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nightingale mean?

1. nounA small migratory songbird known for the male's rich, musical song heard at night and in early morning.

Nightingale in a sentence

• A nightingale sang from the hedgerow long after sunset.

• The woodland reserve protects the rare nightingale during the breeding season.

Where does nightingale come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from Old English nihtegale, a compound of niht meaning 'night' and a second element from galan, a verb meaning 'to sing' or 'to make sound', which also survives in 'yell'. The bird earned its name because the male sings loudly through the hours of darkness, a habit unusual among songbirds. Over the centuries the original nihtegale picked up an intrusive 'n' in the middle, giving the modern 'nightingale', much as 'messenger' and 'passenger' gained an 'n' that was never in their roots. The same galan 'to sing' element appears in close cousins across the old Germanic languages, including the German Nachtigall. Knowing that the centre of the word is literally 'sing' helps explain the unexpected 'ingale' ending rather than a plain 'ingle'.

How the word is built

• night (the time of darkness)
• -in- (intrusive linking n)
• gale (from Old English galan: to sing)