from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
adjective Lasting through the night.
adverb Through the night; all night.
from The Century Dictionary.
Lasting a night.
Through the night.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
adjective Lasting all night.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
adverb Through the night.
adjective Lasting a night (i.e. the duration of one night); lasting all night.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
adjective lasting, open, or operating through the whole night
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Middle English nihtlonge, nihtlonges, from Old English nihtlanges ("for the night "), equivalent to night + -long.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Middle English *nihtlong, from Old English nihtlang ("lasting through the night, night-long, a night in length"), equivalent to night + -long.
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Examples
Pirates who frequented the port cities brought with them a way of life that embraced wild dances, nightlong parties, racial integration, and homosexuality.
It took hundreds of Pakistani navy commandos, marines and paramilitary soldiers, fighting a nightlong gunbattle, to end a siege by a small group of Taliban militants at an air base in the country's largest city Monday, exposing nuclear-armed Pakistan's inability to protect even its most heavily guarded areas from terrorist attacks.
It later emerged that the pastor, who is married with one child, had spent the previous night with a member of his congregation after lying to his wife that he was attending nightlong prayers popularly known as kesha in the town and would, therefore, be away from home.
bilby commented on the word nightlong
Daylong she had been coming,
And all the forest sang
Of beauty: elfin-softly
The bluebells rang.
Nightlong she was in shadow,
She who went away
As the moon does in the silver
Veils of day.
- William Griffith, 'A Forest Rendezvous'.
September 23, 2009