good night
- 1Said as a farewell in the evening or before going to sleep.
"Good night, sweetheart," her father whispered as he turned off the light.
We said good night to our hosts and walked home under the stars.
Note
It is probably a wish cut short, from May you have a good night, and it differs from good evening in one way: it is only ever a goodbye. Good evening can greet someone at the door; good night is for parting late in the day or for sending someone off to bed.
- 2To say the farewell good night to someone.
Dad always stops by our rooms to good-night us before he goes to bed.
The two old friends good-nighted on the corner and went their separate ways.
Note
The verb is hyphenated and takes ordinary endings, good-nights, good-nighting, good-nighted, and it is at ease in the passive: "We were good-nighted and kissed by the crowd of parents," Yann Martel writes in Self (1996). It can also stand alone with no one named, as when someone good-nighted at the gate.
- 3Used as an exclamation of incredulity, when something is hard to believe.
"Oh, good night! You expect me to believe that?" she laughed.
"Good night, look at this mess!" he groaned, staring at the flooded basement.
Note
It now belongs mostly to older fiction, as a mild exclamation with no bedtime in it: Joe groans "Oh, good night!" over ruined record books in Franklin W. Dixon's The Yellow Feather Mystery. It can scoff at a silly question or groan at bad luck, and it usually comes after oh.
Practice
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Origin
Probably a shortening of "May you have a good night."