nightfulness

English

Etymology

From nightful +‎ -ness.

Noun

nightfulness (uncountable)

1. (rare, chiefly poetry) The state of being nightful. [from late 19th c.]
   • 1894 April, chapter XIX, in A New England Woman‎^[1], The Socrates Publishing Company, page 133:

     He feels such delightfulness, stay out all-nightfulness, may I get tightfulness, / Which none can explain.

   • 1967 [1957], Frank O'Hara, “Romanze, or The Musical Students”, in Meditations in an Emergency, 2nd edition, Grove Press, page 20:

     They had thought themselves / in Hawaii when suddenly the pines, / trembling with nightfulness, / shook them out of their sibyllance.

   • 2016 September, Sarah Porter, Vassa in the Night, Tom Doherty Associates, page 163:

     “And as this nightfulness appears to thin with distance, it should be entirely possible to pinpoint its epicenter? I find myself very much inclined to agree, Picnic. […] ”

   • 2017, Julia McCarthy, “A Stab in the Dark”, in All the Names Between, Brick Books, page 5:

     Tonight the crescent moon is on its back / facing the darkness and I know that feeling / of nightfulness and the half ring it leaves / like part of a cupmark on a walnut table […]