dead of night

English

Alternative forms

• dead of the night

Pronunciation

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Noun

dead of night

1. (idiomatic) Middle of the night.

   Synonyms: deep of night; see also Thesaurus:midnight

   • 1960, P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, chapter VII:

     I was feeling just as I had felt in the old Malvern House epoch when I used to sneak down to [the schoolmaster]'s study at dead of night in quest of the biscuits he kept there in a tin on his desk, and there came back to me the memory of the occasion when, not letting a twig snap beneath my feet, I had entered his sanctum in pyjamas and a dressing-gown, to find him seated in his chair, tucking into the biscuits himself.

   • 1968, “Blackbird”, in Paul McCartney (lyrics), The Beatles, performed by The Beatles:

     Blackbird singing in the dead of night / Take these broken wings and learn to fly

Usage notes

• Commonly used as “in the dead of night”, but sometimes “at dead of night” (as if “at midnight”).

Translations

middle of the night

• Dutch: holst van de nacht n
• Finnish: yösydän (fi), sydänyö (fi)
• Galician: noite pecha f
• German: no equivalent term in German, but see mitten in der Nacht
• Hungarian: éjnek évada
• Icelandic: no equivalent term in Icelandic, but see um miðja nótt
• Irish: uair mharbh na hoíche f
• Italian: notte fonda f
• Latvian: dziļa nakts f
• Macedonian: глува доба (gluva doba)
• Polish: środek nocy m
• Portuguese: calada da noite f, noite morta f
• Spanish: plena noche f, noche cerrada f
• Turkish: gecenin körü