nightcore

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noun

A plunderphonic style of music based on taking an original track and speeding it up, increasing its pitch. Usually associated with visuals of anime-style artwork.

Scrabble 15
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Meanings

nounnightcore (uncountable)
  1. uncountableA plunderphonic style of music based on taking an original track and speeding it up, increasing its pitch. Usually associated with visuals of anime-style artwork.

    Mofo's [motherfucker's] tagging nearly everything Nightcore : it's not Nightcore! Maybe if you knew about hardcore you'd know that in the first place. <_<

    2009 May 2, @StatusMessage, Twitter, archived from the original on 08 Jul 2023
    2 more examples

    It's all in the title. Anyone know of good original Nightcore songs? Original being the key word here. And I guess any other really good Nightcore song too.

    2011 December 1, Zephyranth [username], “Any original Nightcore songs?”, in Narkive [originally posted on Yahoo! Answers], archived from the original on 21 Jun 2023

    Grimes has shared a new remix of her recent single “We Appreciate Power.” Billed as a “Nightcore Remix” and produced by HANA, the track sees the original song (also featuring HANA) sped up and pitch-shifted.

    2019 January, Noah Yoo, “Grimes Shares New Nightcore Remix of ‘We Appreciate Power’: Listen”, in Pitchfork

Origin

From night + core (“key part of a thing”) via Nightcore, the name of the Norwegian duo that created the genre. They explained their name by saying "we are the core of the night, so you'll dance all night long." Around 2008, others started making their own songs in the same style and used the term nightcore not to refer music made by the duo, but to the new genre of music as a whole. As this usage spread and knowledge of the original duo faded, the term was reanalyzed as night + -core in the same style as other music genres like metalcore, rapcore, etc.

Full word history & related roots →

Rhymes & wordplay

Anagrams

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Cite this entry
APA

nightcore. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/nightcore

MLA

“nightcore.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/nightcore. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “nightcore,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/nightcore.

Source: nightcore on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.