night的词源

英文词源

night

night: [OE] Night is the English member of an ancient Indo-European family of ‘night’-words, represented in virtually all the modern European languages. The ancestral form was *nokt-, and from this have come Greek núx, Latin nox (source of English nocturnal [15] and nocturne [19], and forerunner of French nuit, Italian notte, and Spanish noche), Welsh nos, Latvian nakts, and Russian noch’. The Germanic descendant of *nokt- was *nakht-, source of modern German and Dutch nacht, Swedish natt, Danish nat, and English night. The only exception to the general European picture is modern Irish oidhche ‘night’, a word of unknown origin.
=> nocturnal

night (n.)

Old English niht (West Saxon neaht, Anglian næht, neht) "night, darkness;" the vowel indicating that the modern word derives from oblique cases (genitive nihte, dative niht), from Proto-Germanic *nakht- (cognates: Old Saxon and Old High German naht, Old Frisian and Dutch nacht, German Nacht, Old Norse natt, Gothic nahts).

The Germanic words are from PIE *nekwt- "night" (cognates: Greek nuks "a night," Latin nox, Old Irish nochd, Sanskrit naktam "at night," Lithuanian naktis "night," Old Church Slavonic nosti, Russian noch', Welsh henoid "tonight"), according to Watkins, probably from a verbal root *neg- "to be dark, be night." For spelling with -gh- see fight.

The fact that the Aryans have a common name for night, but not for day (q.v.), is due to the fact that they reckoned by nights. [Weekley]

Compare German Weihnachten "Christmas." In early times, the day was held to begin at sunset, so Old English monanniht "Monday night" was the night before Monday, or what we would call Sunday night. The Greeks, by contrast, counted their days by mornings.

To work nights preserves the Old English genitive of time. Night shift is attested from 1710 in the sense of "garment worn by a woman at night" (see shift (n.1)); meaning "gang of workers employed after dark" is from 1839. Night soil "excrement" (1770) is so called because it was removed (from cesspools, etc.) after dark. Night train attested from 1838. Night life "habitual nocturnal carousing" attested from 1852.

中文词源

night：夜晚

来自PIE*nekwt,夜晚，词源同nocturnal,equinox.

该词的英语词源请访问趣词词源英文版：night 词源，night 含义。

night：夜，夜晚，黑暗

欧洲各语言表示“夜晚”的词汇,大多数共源于原始印欧语nokt(夜晚)：例如希腊语nux、拉丁语nox(是英语nocturnal和nocturne的词源)、法语nuit，、大利语notte、西班牙语noche、威尔士语nos、拉脱维亚语nakts、俄语noch、德语和荷兰语nacht、瑞典语natt、丹麦语nat、英语night。唯一的例外是爱尔兰语“夜晚”的词汇oidhche,其来源未知。

同源词：nocturnal, nocturne