noctivagant

comparative more noctivagant · superlative most noctivagant

1. Walking or wandering in the nighttime, nightwandering.First known use 17th c.

   Unhappily, we lost the big fellow, Smirke, to noctivagant predators some days back […]

   1982, TC Boyle, Water Music, Penguin, published 2006, page 363

   3 more examples

   […] I therefore think, Sarah, that the incommensurability of the crime with the effect, completely warrants the supersaliency of this noctivagant delinquent.

   1823, James Hogg, “Peril Second. Leasing. Circle II.”, in The Three Perils of Woman; or, Love, Leasing, and Jealousy. […], volume III, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, […], →OCLC, page 91

   "Over the city, the suburb, the slum / He rambled from pillar to post, / And backward and forward, observant, though dumb, / As a fleetly noctivagant ghost."

   1967, Walter Hamilton, Parodies of the Works of English & American Authors, Johnson Reprint Corporation, published 1967, page 195

   "Not merely nocturnal but noctivagant, a nightwalker, a prowler, a nomad of the midnight streets, attempting to abolish the distinction between the light that comes from outside and the sort that shines within."

   2003, Alan Wall, The School of Night, St. Martin's Press, published 2003, pages 223–224

plural noctivagants

1. One who goes walking by night.