moonlight

Etymology

From Middle English monelight, from Old English mōnan lēoht (“moonlight”, literally “moon's light, light of the moon”). Equivalent to moon +‎ light. Cognate with Scots munelicht ~ muinlicht, West Frisian moanneljocht, Dutch maanlicht, German Mondlicht.

Pronunciation

• (US) enPR: mo͞on'līt, IPA^(key): /ˈmunˌlaɪt/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: moon‧light

Noun

moonlight (usually uncountable, plural moonlights)

1. (sometimes attributive) The light reflected from the Moon.
   • c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:

     If you will patiently dance in our round / And see our moonlight revels, go with us; / If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts.

   • c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:

     How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! / Here will we sit and let the sounds of music / Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night / Become the touches of sweet harmony.

   • 1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC:

     […] the sight of the blade which glistened by moonlight in his face, checked, in some sort, the ardour of his assailant […]

   • 1798, William Wordsworth, The Idiot Boy‎, lines 1–4:

     ’Tis eight o’clock,—a clear March night, / The moon is up,—the sky is blue, / The owlet, in the moonlight air, / Shouts from nobody knows where;

   • 1830, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ballad of the Oysterman‎, lines 5–6:

     It was the pensive oysterman that saw a lovely maid, / Upon a moonlight evening, a-sitting in the shade;

   • 1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “Further Communications on Business”, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, page 39:

     [S]he passed away noiselessly, and the moonlight kissed the wall which her shadow had dimmed.

   • 1889, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter XII, in The Master of Ballantrae. […], London, Paris: Cassell & Company, […], →OCLC:

     What say you, gentlemen, shall we have a moonlight hunt?

   • 1897, Bram Stoker, chapter 3, in Dracula, New York, N.Y.: Modern Library, →OCLC:

     The windows were curtainless, and the yellow moonlight, flooding in through the diamond panes, enabled one to see even colours, whilst it softened the wealth of dust which lay over all and disguised in some measure the ravages of time and the moth.

   • 1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter 6, in The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1953, →ISBN, →OCLC:

     They were still under the white plum tree and their faces were touching except for a pale thin ray of moonlight between.

   • 1937 September 21, J[ohn] R[onald] R[euel] Tolkien, “A Thief in the Night”, in The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again, revised edition, New York, N.Y.: Ballantine Books, published February 1966 (August 1967 printing), →OCLC, page 257:

     It [the Arkenstone] was as if a globe had been filled with moonlight and hung before them in a net woven of the glint of frosty stars.

   • 1957, Sylvia Dee, “Moonlight Swim” (song recorded by Nick Noble and Elvis Presley),

     Let’s go on a moonlight swim / Far away from the crowd / All alone upon the beach / Our lips and our arms / Close within each other’s reach / Will be on a moonlight swim

   • 1958, Chinua Achebe, chapter 2, in Things Fall Apart, New York: Astor-Honor, published 1959:

     On a moonlight night it would be different. The happy voices of children playing in open fields would then be heard. And perhaps those not so young would be playing in pairs in less open places, and old men and women would remember their youth.

Verb

moonlight (third-person singular simple present moonlights, present participle moonlighting, simple past and past participle moonlighted)

1. To work on the side (at a secondary job), often in the evening or during the night.
   • 2004 July, Richard Porter, Paul Kerensa, “MPVs as minicabs” (00:22:29 from the start), in Top Gear (2002 TV series), season 4, episode 7, spoken by James D. May, United Kingdom, Isle of Man, Channel Islands, via BBC Two, →OCLC:

     There are three individual rear seats. They all slide, they all fold, or they can all be removed completely, so that you can moonlight as a van.

   • 2011 August 19, Carl Knutson, “The Plane That Flew Too High” (41:00 from the start), in Mayday: Air Disaster, season 11, episode 2, spoken by Jonathan Aris:

     Investigators discover that Captain Ospina was forced to take a second job, moonlighting in a bar, in order to make ends meet for his family.

   • 2014, Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Picador, →ISBN, page 240:

     Believing the bones to belong to a cave bear, the quarry owner passed them on to a local schoolteacher, Johann Carl Fuhlrott, who moonlighted as a fossilist.

2. (by extension) To engage in an activity other than what one is known for.
   • 2024 July 11, Theodore Schleifer, Jacob Bernstein, Reid J. Epstein, “How Biden Lost George Clooney and Hollywood”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     Mr. Katzenberg, who moonlights as a top Biden official and has worked with Mr. Clooney on philanthropy for decades, reached out to him to see if there was an off-ramp, according to three people familiar with the matter.

3. (by extension, of an inanimate object) To perform a secondary function substantially different from its supposed primary function, as in protein moonlighting.
4. (British, dated) To carry out undeclared work.

References

Further reading

• Moonlight on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• monolight