nyctophile

From nycto- (“night”) +‎ -phile.

nyctophile (plural nyctophiles)

1. Someone who loves the night or darkness.

   Synonym: nyctophiliac

   Antonym: nyctophobe

   • 1973, Garson Kanin, A Thousand Summers, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., →ISBN, page 17:

     He reads—he writes—late into the night. It's his way. He's a night person. A 'nyctophile' he calls himself.

   • 2000, Brad Houston, Too Young to Die, Victoria, B.C.: Trafford Publishing, →ISBN, page 224:

     Altogether, these four varieties of nyctophiles chewed great hunks out of my sleeping time, and accounted for many of my less charitable thoughts, during the hours that the "general populace" was enjoying restful "shut-eye"'.

   • 2017 August 7, “When is the next full solar eclipse in the UK?”, in The Daily Telegraph‎, London: Telegraph Media Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-01-18:

     Britain will not see a total solar eclipse until September 23, 2090, but there are a plethora of partial eclipses in the meantime to keep nyctophiles content.

2. (zoology, archaic) Any of the Australian bats of the genus Nyctophilus.
   • 1843, Synopsis, or Guide Book to the British Museum, London: George Woodfall and Son, page 29:

     Case 25. The Nycteres of Africa, and the Petalias of Java; the Nyctophiles of Australia; the Barbastelles and long-eared bats of Europe; and the true bat and Scotophiles, which are scattered over different parts of the world, and the Lasiures of America.

• William Dwight Whitney and Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1914), “nyctophile”, in The Century Dictionary: An Encyclopedic Lexicon of the English Language, revised edition, volume III, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC, page 4047.
• “nyctophile”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• polyethnic