Meanings
- uncountableLove of the night; attraction (sometimes sexual) to night or darkness.
Manilal Desai died at a very young age. His posthumous collection edited by his friends manifests modern lyricism, nyctophilia and death obsessions.
1972, Contemporary Gujarati Poetry, Surat : Western India Publishing Company, page 63 more examples
which disdains psychological analysis—"the obscurities that one encounters in Herman Melville or in Franz Kafka are not due to lack of resources for illumination, to artifices, or even to nyctophilia; they derive from the ultimate mystery of existence"; […]
1971, Americas (English Ed.), volume 23Getting Lost: Lovers engaged in nyctophilia can become disoriented in near-total darkness. It's easy […] Use your voice to locate your partner, then move slowly toward the voice. […]
2014, Felicia Zopol, The Sex Instruction Manual: Essential Information and Techniques for Optimum Performance, Quirk Books, →ISBN, page 174It was late. The clock had just struck midnight and Thomas was distracting himself with another virtual reality horror game. Maybe it was a simple case of nyctophilia, but he found a certain level of comfort in scary games, especially the ones that involved Bigfoot. It was officially Halloween; and anything was better than thinking about that damned photograph […]
2020, Ethan Blake, Into the Hollow, first page of chapter 4Synonyms: amaurophilia
Synonyms & antonyms
nounLove of the night; attraction (sometimes sexual) to night or darkness.
Origin
- Englishnycto-
- Ancient Greekφῐλῐ́ᾱ (phĭlĭ́ā)
- Englishnyctophilia
From nycto- (“night”) + -philia.
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Rhymes with nyctophilia
Cite this entry
nyctophilia. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/nyctophilia
“nyctophilia.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/nyctophilia. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “nyctophilia,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/nyctophilia.
Source: nyctophilia on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.