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night owl
[ nahyt oul ]
noun
- a person who often stays up late at night; nighthawk.
night owl
noun
- informal.a person who is or prefers to be up and about late at night
Word History and Origins
Origin of night owl1
Idioms and Phrases
A person who habitually stays up late and is active at night, as in You can call her after midnight, for she's a night owl . This colloquial term, originally used in the late 1500s for an owl that is active at night, was transferred to nocturnal human beings in the mid-1800s.Example Sentences
From a tree near the forest Tess could hear the screech of a night-owl die away in smothered laughter.
It was some one mimicking a night-owl, and doing it very badly, as the boy's true ear detected at once.
Shall we rouse the night-owl in a catch, that will draw three souls out of one weaver?
So fill the glasses, once more, from the wassail-bowl, and let us "rouse the night-owl" in another "catch!"
The lights were low, and Clem, a night-owl, fixed him in a chair near the door.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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