moonlight

English

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.

Pronunciation

• (US) enPR: mo͞on'līt, IPA^(key): /ˈmunˌlaɪt/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Hyphenation: moon‧light

Noun

moonlight (usually uncountable, plural moonlights)

1. (sometimes attributive) The light reflected from the Moon.
   • 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 Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     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.

   • 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 Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     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.

   • 1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle , volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., , →OCLC:

     […] the sight of the blade which glistened by moonlight in his face, checked, in some sort, the ardour of his assailant […]

   • 1798, William Wordsworth, The Idiot Boy‎, lines 1–4:

     ’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;

   • 1830, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ballad of the Oysterman‎, lines 5–6:

     It was the pensive oysterman that saw a lovely maid,
     Upon a moonlight evening, a-sitting in the shade;

   • 1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter 13, in Shirley. A Tale. , volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Smith, Elder and Co., , →OCLC:

     She passed away noiselessly, and the moonlight kissed the wall which her shadow had dimmed.

   • 1889, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 12, in The Master of Ballantrae‎:

     “ […] What say you, gentlemen, shall we have a moonlight hunt?”

   • 1897, Bram Stoker, chapter 3, in Dracula, New York, N.Y.: Modern Library, →OCLC:

     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.

   • 1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter 6, in The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1953, →ISBN, →OCLC:

     They were still under the white plum tree and their faces were touching except for a pale thin ray of moonlight between.

   • 1937 September 21, J[ohn] R[onald] R[euel] Tolkien, chapter 16, in The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again, 3rd edition, London: Unwin Books, George Allen & Unwin, published 1966 (1970 printing), →ISBN, page 272:

     It was as if a globe had been filled with moonlight and hung before them in a net woven of the glint of frosty stars.

   • 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

   • 1958, Chinua Achebe, chapter 2, in Things Fall Apart, New York: Astor-Honor, published 1959:

     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.

Hypernyms

• light

Derived terms

• moonlight blue
• moonlight flit
• moonlight requisition
• moonlight tower
• moonlight-and-magnolia
• moonlighting
• moonlight school
• moonlighty

Related terms

• moonlit

Translations

Verb

moonlight (third-person singular simple present moonlights, present participle moonlighting, simple past and past participle moonlighted)

1. To work on the side (at a secondary job), often in the evening or during the night.
   • 2004 July, Richard Porter, Paul Kerensa, “MPVs as minicabs” (00:22:29 from the start), in Top Gear (2002 TV series), season 4, episode 7, James D. May (actor), United Kingdom, Isle of Man, Channel Islands, via BBC Two, →OCLC:

     There are three individual rear seats. They all slide, they all fold, or they can all be removed completely, so that you can moonlight as a van.

   • 2014, Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Picador, →ISBN, page 240:

     Believing the bones to belong to a cave bear, the quarry owner passed them on to a local schoolteacher, Johann Carl Fuhlrott, who moonlighted as a fossilist.

2. (by extension) To engage in an activity other than what one is known for.
3. (by extension, of an inanimate object) To perform a secondary function substantially different from its supposed primary function, as in protein moonlighting.
4. (British, dated) To carry out undeclared work.

Usage notes

In American English, to moonlight is simply to work at secondary employment; in British English, it used to imply working secretly (i.e. not paying tax on the extra money earned), but more recent editions of some UK dictionaries no longer differentiate between the US and UK meaning; in both, legality of moonlighting is thus qualified with adjectives.

Derived terms

• moonlighter

Translations

References

Further reading

• Moonlight on Wikipedia.Wikipedia