moonlight
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: mo͞on'līt
ipa: /ˈmunˌlaɪt/
Forms: form: moonlights
Etymology: From Middle English monelight, from Old English mōnan lēoht (“moonlight”, literally “moon's light, light of the moon”). Equivalent to moon + light. Cognate with Scots munelicht ~ muinlicht, West Frisian moanneljocht, Dutch maanlicht, German Mondlicht.
Senses: examples: text: If you will patiently dance in our round / And see our moonlight revels, go with us; / If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts.
ref: c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:
text: How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! / Here will we sit and let the sounds of music / Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night / Become the touches of sweet harmony.
ref: c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:
text: […] the sight of the blade which glistened by moonlight in his face, checked, in some sort, the ardour of his assailant […]
ref: 1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC:
text: ’Tis eight o’clock,—a clear March night, / The moon is up,—the sky is blue, / The owlet, in the moonlight air, / Shouts from nobody knows where;
ref: 1798, William Wordsworth, The Idiot Boy, lines 1–4:
text: It was the pensive oysterman that saw a lovely maid, / Upon a moonlight evening, a-sitting in the shade;
ref: 1830, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ballad of the Oysterman, lines 5–6:
text: [S]he passed away noiselessly, and the moonlight kissed the wall which her shadow had dimmed.
ref: 1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “Further Communications on Business”, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, page 39:
text: What say you, gentlemen, shall we have a moonlight hunt?
ref: 1889, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter XII, in The Master of Ballantrae. […], London; Paris: Cassell & Company, […], →OCLC:
text: The windows were curtainless, and the yellow moonlight, flooding in through the diamond panes, enabled one to see even colours, whilst it softened the wealth of dust which lay over all and disguised in some measure the ravages of time and the moth.
ref: 1897, Bram Stoker, chapter 3, in Dracula, New York, N.Y.: Modern Library, →OCLC:
text: They were still under the white plum tree and their faces were touching except for a pale thin ray of moonlight between.
ref: 1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter 6, in The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1953, →ISBN, →OCLC:
text: It [the Arkenstone] was as if a globe had been filled with moonlight and hung before them in a net woven of the glint of frosty stars.
ref: 1937 September 21, J[ohn] R[onald] R[euel] Tolkien, “A Thief in the Night”, in The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again, revised edition, New York, N.Y.: Ballantine Books, published February 1966 (August 1967 printing), →OCLC, page 257:
text: 1957, Sylvia Dee, “Moonlight Swim” (song recorded by Nick Noble and Elvis Presley),
Let’s go on a moonlight swim / Far away from the crowd / All alone upon the beach / Our lips and our arms / Close within each other’s reach / Will be on a moonlight swim
text: On a moonlight night it would be different. The happy voices of children playing in open fields would then be heard. And perhaps those not so young would be playing in pairs in less open places, and old men and women would remember their youth.
ref: 1958, Chinua Achebe, chapter 2, in Things Fall Apart, New York: Astor-Honor, published 1959:
glosses: The light reflected from the Moon.
Hypernyms: light
Derived terms: do a moonlight flit
moonlight-and-magnolia
moonlight blue
moonlight flit
moonlighting
moonlight requisition
moonlight school
moonlight tower
moonlighty
stink like a mackerel in the moonlight
Related terms: moonlit