night
/naɪt/
"night" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“night” is in the everyday core of English, ranked #221 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #221
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 8
- tracked misspellings
- 15
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The time when the Sun is below the horizon when the sky is dark.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | night |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /naɪt/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #221 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 15 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “night” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for night is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /naɪt/. Corpus data places it at rank #221 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language. Wiktionary records 9 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 8 likely wrong-spelling variants for night, with forms such as "inght", "ngiht", and "nigght". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 15 confusable-pair relationships, "NIH", "nit", "NIST", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English nighte, night, nyght, niȝt, naht, from Old English niht, from Proto-West Germanic *naht (“night”), from Proto-Germanic *nahts (“night”), from Proto-Indo-European *nókʷts (“night”). Cognates Cognate with Scots nicht (“night”), Yola neeght… The correct English form is night, spelled N-I-G-H-T.
Definition
- 1The time when the Sun is below the horizon when the sky is dark.
- 2The period of darkness beginning at the end of evening astronomical twilight when the sun is 18 degrees below the horizon, and ending at the beginning of morning astronomical twilight.
- 3A period of time often defined in the legal system as beginning 30 minutes after sunset, and ending 30 minutes before sunrise.
- 4An evening or night spent at a particular activity.
- 5A day, or at least a night.
- 6Nightfall.
- 7Darkness (due to it being nighttime).
- 8A dark blue colour, midnight blue.
- 9A night's worth of competitions, generally one game.
Etymology
From Middle English nighte, night, nyght, niȝt, naht, from Old English niht, from Proto-West Germanic *naht (“night”), from Proto-Germanic *nahts (“night”), from Proto-Indo-European *nókʷts (“night”). Cognates Cognate with Scots nicht (“night”), Yola neeght, nieght, nyeght (“night”), North Frisian naacht, Nacht, noach, nåcht (“night”), Saterland Frisian Noacht (“night”), West Frisian nacht (“night”), Cimbrian, Dutch nacht (“night”), German, Low German Nacht (“night”), Luxembourgish Nuecht (“night”), Mòcheno nòcht (“night”), Vilamovian naocht (“night”), Yiddish נאַכט (nakht, “night”), Danish nat (“night”), Faroese nátt (“night”), Icelandic nátt, nótt (“night”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish natt (“night”), Scanian nøtt (“night”), Gothic 𐌽𐌰𐌷𐍄𐍃 (nahts, “night”); also Breton noz (“night”), Cornish and Welsh nos (“night”), Irish anocht (“tonight”), Manx noght (“tonight”), Scottish Gaelic a-nochd, an nochd (“tonight”), Latin nox (“night”) (whence English nox, a doublet), Greek νύχτα (nýchta, “night”), Albanian natë (“night”), Latgalian and Latvian nakts (“night”), Lithuanian naktis (“night”), Belarusian ноч (noč, “night”), Bulgarian нощ (nošt, “night”), Czech, Polish, and Slovak noc (“night”), Macedonian ноќ (noḱ, “night”), Russian ночь (nočʹ, “night”), Serbo-Croatian ноћ, noć (“night”), Slovene noč (“night”), Ukrainian ніч (nič, “night”), Tocharian A nakcu (“last night; at night”), Tocharian B nekcīye (“last night; at night”), Hittite 𒉈𒆪𒊻 (nekuz, “evening, nightfall; dawn, twilight”), Sanskrit नक्त् (nákt).
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: inght,ngiht,nigght,nighht,nightt,nigth,nihgt,nnight
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of night - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “night”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is N-I-G-H-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /naɪt/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “NIH” - see the side-by-side comparison. night vs NIH
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.