midnight
noun
Simple meaning
12 o'clock at night.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
midnytSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈmɪdnaɪt
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
12 o'clock at night; the middle of the night
“Young children should not be allowed to stay up until midnight.”
Twelve o'clock at night exactly.
The middle of the night: the sixth temporal hour, equidistant between sunset and sunrise.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: 12 o'clock at night; the middle of the night
Used this way, midnight is a common word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
“Young children should not be allowed to stay up until midnight.”
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use midnight
- “Young children should not be allowed to stay up until midnight.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
The sun visible at midnight (inside the Arctic or Antarctic Circles).
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.