noctidial

English

Etymology

From Latin nox, noctis (“night”) + dies (“day”).

Adjective

noctidial (not comparable)

1. Comprising a night and a day.

   A noctidial period on Earth is 24 hours long.

   • 1694, William Holder, A discourse concerning Time, with application of the natural day, and lunar month, and solar year, as natural, page 98:

     The Noctidial Day, the Lunar Periodic Month, and the Solar Year are Natural and Universal; but Incommensurate each to other, and difficult to be reconciled: Yet we are constrained to make use of them, as Measures  […]

   • 1856, Samuel Klinefelter Hoshour, Letters to Squire Pedant, in the East, page 32:

     […] I extended my peragration of the occident in an austrine direction. After the profection of a noctidial period, I espied an ample concourse […]

   • 1884, Mark Lemon, Henry Mayhew, Tom Taylor, Shirley Brooks, Francis Cowley Burnand, Owen Seaman, Punch, page 102:

     Farewell to noctidial sittings, / Snatched naps, and occasional "nips"! / Good-bye to swift-bolted bun-lunches, / To tasks which I did not expect,  […]

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “noctidial”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Anagrams

• dictional, dilatonic