nightlight
nounUS /ˈnaɪtˌlaɪt/
Etymology From night + light.
1
A small, dim light or lamp left on overnight.
- She had brought in with her the night-light that had been burning outside her door. She blew it out.1925, D. H. Lawrence, chapter XVIII, in Louis L. Martz, editor, Quetzalcoatl, New York: New Directions, published 1998, page 310:
- They made you give up / your nightlight / and your teddy / and your thumb.1974, Anne Sexton, “The Fury of Overshoes”, in The Complete Poems, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, published 1981, page 372:
2 more examples
- 1988, Joseph Brodsky, "Gorbunov and Gorchakov" Canto 13 in In Urania, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p. 165, Your light cannot drive off the dark from me— / not any more than night-lights by the bed / drive off my dreams.
- He put a small nightlight in the bathroom to find his way around in the dark.
2
Light that shines at night, such as moonlight or starlight.
- The floor-cloth deadened his footsteps as he moved in that direction through the obscurity, which was broken only by the faintest reflected night-light from without.1895, Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, Part Six, Chapter III:
- […] the man held up two small objects faintly twinkling in the nightlight;1924, Herman Melville, chapter 12, in Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co.:
1 more example
- Their made-up faces were garish in the night-light and as they walked they stared fixedly ahead, afraid to make a sideways glance in case it should be called soliciting.1980, William Trevor, chapter 4, in Other People's Worlds, Penguin, published 1982, page 79:
- Derived terms
- nightlighter