moonlight means the light reflected from the Moon, which seems to emanate from it. It carries an Arena rating of 1855, earned across 29 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, moonlight ranks #242 of 17,130 for Most Beautiful Words, #1,175 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #1,192 of 17,127 for Most Vivid Words, #1,391 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books.
moonlight is pronounced /ˈmuːnlaɪt/.
Why “moonlight” is a great word
The pale, reflected light of the moon; also, to work a secondary job, often at night, or to depart a property by stealth to evade obligations. From Middle English, a compound of 'moon' (Old English mōna, from Proto-Germanic *mēnô) and 'light' (Old English lēoht, from Proto-Germanic *leuhtą), first attested as a noun c. 1300; the verb sense of working a second job is a back-formation from 'moonlighter', attested in the 1950s. Unlike 'sunlight' (which emanates directly, hot and declarative, from its source) or 'moonshine' (which smuggles its illegality in the bottle rather than the hour), moonlight is borrowed luminescence, a silvered debt paid across the void. It is the chalked path across a bedroom floor where someone calculates sleep against wages, the shadowed loading dock where a second shift begins as the first ends, and the emptied apartment with forwarding address withheld—a glow just bright enough to work by, dim enough to disappear in.
Etymology
The noun is derived from Middle English moonelight, monelight, mone lyght (“light of the moon; (heraldry) pattern of moons on the field of a heraldic banner”), from mon, mone (“moon”) (from Old English mōna (“moon”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *mḗh₁n̥s (“moon; month”)) + light (“light”) (from Old English lēoht (“light”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *lewk- (“bright; to see; to shine”)). By surface analysis, moon + light. The verb is derived from the noun. Verb sense 1.1 (“to secretly leave premises without paying the rent”) is a back-formation from moonlight flit, while verb sense 1.2 (“to make a night-time attack on a tenant farmer”) is probably a back-formation from moonlighter. cognates * Dutch maanlicht * German Mondlicht * Scots muinlicht, munelicht * West Frisian moan
noun
- The light reflected from the Moon, which seems to emanate from it.e.g.“Meronym: moonbeam”
- The silvery colour of the light reflected by the Moon.
- Synonym of moonshine (“illegally produced or smuggled spirits”).e.g.“Barter'd for game from chace or warren won, / Yon cask holds moonlight, run when moon was none; / And late-snatch'd spoils lie stow'd in hutch apart, / To wait the associate higgler's evening cart.” — 1809, [Walter Scott], “Fragments, which Originally Appeared in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1809. The Poacher.”, in The Bridal of Triermain, or The Vale of St John. In Three Cantos, Edinburgh: […
- Chiefly in to do a moonlight: short for moonlight flit (“an act of secretly leaving premises without paying the rent, supposedly at night by the light of the Moon; hence, any act of escaping at night”).
- A picture of a scene illuminated by light reflected by the Moon.
- A journey made at night when the Moon is shining.
- An oratorical competition; also, a participant in such a competition.
verb
- To do a moonlight flit: to secretly leave premises without paying the rent, supposedly at night by the light of the Moon.
- To make a night-time attack on a tenant farmer not supporting the policies of the Irish National Land League.
- To do work for pay (sometimes illegally, secretly, or without paying income tax on the earnings) which is in addition to a main job, often in the evening or at night.e.g.“There are three individual rear seats. They all slide, they all fold, or they can all be removed completely, so that you can moonlight as a van.” — 2004 July, Richard Porter, Paul Kerensa, “MPVs as Minicabs” (00:22:29 from the start), in Top Gear, season 4, episode 7, spoken by James May, London, via BBC Two, →OCLC:
- To do work for pay (sometimes illegally, secretly, or without paying income tax on the earnings) which is in addition to a main job, often in the evening or at night.; To engage in an activity other than what one is known for.
- To do work for pay (sometimes illegally, secretly, or without paying income tax on the earnings) which is in addition to a main job, often in the evening or at night.; Of a thing: to perform a secondary function substantially different from a supposed primary function.e.g.“Some proteins have a primary function of acting as enzymes, but moonlight by carrying out secondary roles such as signal transduction or transcriptional regulation.”
- Of a tenant farmer: to be attacked for not supporting the policies of the Irish National Land League.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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