night-owl
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: night-owls
Senses: examples: text: Their Weapons like to Lightning, came and went: / Our Souldiers like the Night-Owles lazie flight, / Or like a lazie Threſher with a Flaile, / Fell gently downe, as if they ſtrucke their Friends.
ref: c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i], page 153, column 1:
text: The well imitated cry of the night-owl, too frequent a guest in the wilderness that its call should be a subject of surprise, seemed to be a signal generally understood among them; [...]
ref: 1831 June–November (date written), Jedadiah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], chapter [IX], in Tales of My Landlord, Fourth and Last Series. […], volume IV (Castle Dangerous), Edinburgh: […] [Ballantyne and Company] for Robert Cadell; London: Whittaker and Co., published 1 December 1831 (indicated as 1832), →OCLC, page 220:
text: Wild waileth the night-wind through turret and hall, / Where the spider weaveth the funeral pall, / And voice of old from the dead Past call, / While the night-owl responds from the crumbling old wall, / Tu-whit! the midnight is murky and drear— / Tu-whoo! the deed is a deed of fear.
ref: 1867, Fadette [pseudonym; Marian Calhoun Legare Reeves], chapter VI, in Ingemisco, New York, N.Y.: Blelock & Co., […], →OCLC, page 99:
text: There we should have waked the night-owl with a catch, had an owl been within hearing. The watchman did instead.
ref: 1873, Leigh Hunt, “No. III. Piccadilly and the West End.”, in J[oseph] E[dward] B[abson], editor, The Wishing-cap Papers. … Now First Collected, Boston, Mass.: Lee and Shepard, publishers; New York, N.Y.: Lee, Shepard and Dillingham, →OCLC, page 41:
text: The night-owl,—a mug-shaped instrument, with an orifice in its side, through which a whistle is inserted,—when used, is partly filled with water, to give the tremulous owl-hoot sound.
ref: 1874 May, James Judson Lord, “Haydn’s Children’s Symphony [actually the Toy Symphony, possibly by Leopold Mozart or Edmund Angerer]”, in [Mary Mapes Dodge], editor, St. Nicholas, volume I, number 7, New York, N.Y.: Scribner & Co., →OCLC, page 429, column 2:
text: At the right was the piano, with a young lady seated, ready to play. Just before the curtain, and arranged in a semicircle, sat the juvenile orchestra,—Kitty with a tin trumpet; Jane with her night-owl filled with water and ready to pipe up; Julia with another bird, but having a different note; John with his drum, and Edward with his trumpet.
ref: 1889, Charles Barnard, chapter VI, in The Tone Masters: A Musical Series for Young People, Boston, Mass.: New England Conservatory of Music, →OCLC, book I (Mozart and Mendelssohn), pages 189–190:
text: O the strange fascination of these half-known half-impassable swamps, infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and the whirr of the rattlesnake, [...]
ref: 1892, Walt Whitman, “O Magnet-South”, in Leaves of Grass […], Philadelphia, Pa.: David McKay, publisher, […], →OCLC, page 360:
text: From time to time, I called "Kasim!" at the top of my voice. But the sound died away among the tree-trunks; and I got no answer but the "clevitt" of a frightened night-owl.
ref: 1926, Sven Hedin, “Robinson Crusoe”, in [Alfhild Huebsch], transl., My Life as an Explorer, London; New York, N.Y.: Cassell and Company, →OCLC, page 142:
glosses: Alternative form of night owl.