Good night or goodnight?
good night is a phrase meaning “A farewell said in the evening or before going to sleep”; goodnight is a noun meaning “An instance of saying “good night”; a nighttime farewell”. Wiktionary gives them as spellings of the same word. Use good night as a phrase and goodnight as a noun. good night is written as two words and goodnight as one word; they are used differently.
What is the difference between good night and goodnight?
| good night | goodnight | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | phrase, verb | phrase, noun, verb |
| Meaning | A farewell said in the evening or before going to sleep colloquialExpressing incredulity To utter the farewell “good night” to (somebody) | An instance of saying “good night”; a nighttime farewell |
| Example | none recorded | none recorded |
| Forms | goodnight | goodnights |
| Pronunciation | /ɡʊd ˈnaɪt/ [ɡʊd̚ˈnäɪt] | not recorded |
| In writing | not counted (the list counts single words) | 4.4 times per million words |
Sources: good night and goodnight in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of good night and goodnight
good night
- 1
A farewell said in the evening or before going to sleep
- 2
To utter the farewell “good night” to (somebody)
- 3
colloquialExpressing incredulity
goodnight
- 1
Alternative spelling of good night
- 2
An instance of saying “good night”; a nighttime farewell
- 3
Alternative spelling of good-night
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, good night or goodnight?
good night is a phrase, which the list of single words does not count; goodnight 4.4 times per million words.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search good night vs goodnight?
“good night vs goodnight” is searched about 720 times a month on Google and 30 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“goodnight vs good night”, “good night or goodnight”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.