Midnight or midnite?
midnight is a noun meaning “The middle of the night: the sixth temporal hour, equidistant between sunset…”; midnite is a noun meaning “Alternative spelling of midnight”. Wiktionary gives them as spellings of the same word. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) midnight is about 178 times as common as midnite.
What is the difference between midnight and midnite?
| midnight | midnite | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun, adjective | noun |
| Meaning | The middle of the night: the sixth temporal hour, equidistant between sunset and sunrise Twelve o'clock at night exactly Utterly dark or black | Alternative spelling of midnight |
| Example | Thanks to its sonar, the narwhal can remain active even at midnight, unhindered by the darkness | none recorded |
| Forms | midnights | midnites |
| Pronunciation | /ˈmɪd(ˌ)naɪt/ [ˈmɪd̚naɪt] [ˈmɪd̚(ˌ)nɑjt] | not recorded |
| In writing | 20 times per million words | about once in every 9 million words |
Sources: midnight and midnite 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 midnight and midnite
midnight
- 1
The middle of the night: the sixth temporal hour, equidistant between sunset and sunrise
Thanks to its sonar, the narwhal can remain active even at midnight, unhindered by the darkness
- 2
Utterly dark or black
- 3
Twelve o'clock at night exactly
- 4
Synonym of boxcars (“a pair of sixes”)
midnite
- 1
Alternative spelling of midnight
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, midnight or midnite?
midnight appears 20 times per million words; midnite about once in every 9 million words.
midnight 20 times per million wordsmidnite about once in every 9 million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).