nightward

English

Etymology

night +‎ -ward

Adjective

nightward (not comparable)

1. Toward night.
   • 1829 [1674], John Milton, Letter to a mentor:

     Yet, that you may see I am something suspicious of myself, and do take note of a certain belatedness in me, I am the bolder to sen you some of my nightward thoughts sometime since.

   • 1866, Adeline Dutton Train Whitney, Faith Gartney's Girlhood, page 215:

     Perhaps, as if clouds that had parted, sending a sunbeam across from the west upon the dark sorrow of the morning, had shut again, inexorably, leaving him still to tread the nightward path under the old, leaden sky.

   • 1907, Henry Dumont, The Vision of a City: And Other Poems, page 24:

     What of the day could turn their nightward eyes?

   • 2007, Wayne Clifford, The Exile's Papers, page 94:

     Though twilight balms the west, my fears see something brutal in that nightward star.

   • 2011, Craig Koslofsky, Evening's Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe, page 233:

     The nightward shift of daily times for dinner (i.e., the main, “midday” meal), supper, and sleep by social class is underscored by the view from Napoleon's Paris:

2. Toward the nightside of a planet.

   nightward flow

   nightward ion flow

   • 1995, Richard O. Fimmel, Pioneering Venus: A Planet Unveiled, page 2:

     Nightward ion flow was greatly reduced at solar minimum .

   • 1997, Stephen Wesley Bougher, Donald M. Hunten, Roger J. Phillips, Venus II--geology, Geophysics, Atmosphere, and Solar Wind Environment, page 179:

     The near equality of the estimates for the nightward ion flux and nightside recombination rate would seem to indicate that electron precipitation does not play a major role in ion production.

   • 2012, John L. Phillips, David J. McComas, “The Magnetosheath and Magnetotail of Venus”, in C.T. Russell, editor, Venus Aeronomy, page 111:

     This made nightward transport a more likely source of the nightside ionosphere, at least at solar maximum.

   • 2014, Clark Ashton Smith, S. T. Joshi, The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies, page 94:

     And I have seen the frozen, giant-builded battlements of Uogam on the glacial tundras of the nightward hemisphere of Venus.

   • 2018, Mary Robinette Kowal, The Fated Sky: A Lady Astronaut Novel:

     If the lights were off inside the ship, and we were pointed nightward, you could see the stars, but there was always a barrier.

   • 2018, John G. Neihardt, A Cycle of the West, page 461:

     The shadows had begun to overflow Their stagnant puddles on the nightward side, When presently the roar of battle died

   • 2022, Edward Willett, Shapers of Worlds:

     “I thought we might take a look at the dens on the nightward edge of the cliffs,” Salva said, flipping playfully in the air like a gull, her wing fully healed from the blackfish's attack.

Adverb

nightward (not comparable)

1. Into the night.
   • 1876, Ebenezer Elliott, Edwin Elliott, The Poetical Works of Ebenezer Elliott, page 120:

     I follow soon; My day of life wanes nightward fast from noon, And evening lowers.

   • 1887, Adeline Dutton Train Whitney, “Life Colors”, in Daffodils, page 24:

     For life's primrose, faint and old, Nightward sweep her tides of gold, Grand with glories unrepressed, When the sun is in the west..

   • 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise:

     So the gray car crept nightward in the dark and there was no life stirred as it went by.

   • 1948, William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust:

     […] even a few belated cars and trucks whose occupants had stayed in for the picture show too or to visit and take supper with kin or friends who had moved to town and now at last were dispersing nightward sleepward tomorrow-ward about the dark mile-compassing land but not now, not tonight;

   • 2020, Rupert Brooke, The Poems of Rupert Brooke, page 11:

     The crowd's good laughter, the loved eyes of men, I am drawn nightward;

   • 2021, S A Sidor, Cult of the Spider Queen: An Arkham Horror Novel, page 295:

     Andy was about to step in when a bat flew at him, blowing his hair as it flapped nightward into the canopy.

2. On or toward the nightside of a planet.
   • 2012, John L. Phillips, David J. McComas, “The Magnetosheath and Magnetotail of Venus”, in C.T. Russell, editor, Venus Aeronomy, page 44:

     Fourth, Knudsen et al. (1982) have shown that the closure of the magnetosheth flow, as evidenced by the ionopause altitude nightward of the terminator, is appropriate for isentropic expansion into the wake of an obstacle.

   • 2015, Jess E. Owen, A Shard of Sun:

     Out in front of them and as far as he could see nightward, the land slowly crawled away from the desert of the Winderost and rolled back into grassy foothills lined with juniper and pine forest.

   • 2022, R. P. Singhal, Elements of Space Physics, page 210:

     Therefore, the plasma from the dayside can flow without restriction nightward under a pressure gradient force.

Noun

nightward (uncountable)

1. The direction of oncoming night.
   • 1621, Lady Mary Wroth, The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania, page 316:

     No time was lost betweene them, for each minute was fild with store of wit, which passed betweene them, as grounds are with shadowes where people walke: and the longer they discoursed still grew as much more excellent, as they, to nightward seeme longer.

   • 1897, Francis Thompson, “An Anthem of Earth”, in New Poems, page 84:

     Then when thy circuit swung to nightward, Night the abhorrèd, night was a new dawning, Celestial dawning Over the ultimate marges of the soul;

   • 1906, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Arthur Beatty, “The Armada”, in Swinburne's Poems, page 215:

     And the day sweeps round to the nightward; and heavy and hard the waves Roll in on the herd of the hurtling galleons ;