a brownish European songbird, Luscinia megarhynchos, with a broad reddish-brown tail: well known for its musical song, usually heard at night
any of various similar or related birds, such as Luscinia luscinia ( thrush nightingale )
1200–50; Middle English nightyngale, nasalized variant of nightegale, Old English nihtegale, cognate with German Nachtigall, literally, night singer (compare Old English galan sing; akin to yell )
A nightingale is a very small bird with a beautiful, loud song. If you hear the distinctive whistles of the nightingale, it is most likely a male bird seeking a mate. Nightingales got their name because of the unattached male's habit of singing long into the night (although nightingales also sing during the day). Its song is distinctive and powerful, with trills, whistles, and gurgling sounds punctuating it. The nightingale has inspired writers of all sorts throughout history, including ancient Greeks, the poet Chaucer, and T.S. Eliot in "The Waste Land." The name nightingale combines night with the Proto-Germanic galon, "to sing."
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
He laid out the "hard problem" of working out how and why any of the complex operations of brains give rise to conscious experience, such as our emotional response when we hear a nightingale sing.
From BBC ● May 25, 2025
Just as the familiar tune “In the Hall of the Mountain King” gradually builds speed “accelerando,” as the compositional notation is known, some birdsong does too, like that of the nightingale.
From New York Times ● Jun. 6, 2023
The nightingale gives its lifeblood to create a perfect red rose.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 22, 2020
Face masks made of nightingale faeces, used by elite Japanese women for centuries, are one of the stranger beautifying techniques currently resurgent in western salons.
From The Guardian ● Nov. 19, 2019
He laid Lyra on the enormous palm, and she gazed up at the giant with perfect confidence, and Pantalaimon sang like a nightingale.
From "The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage" by Philip Pullman
On Sept. 4, researchers at another not-for-profit group, the Nightingale Collective, found that OpenAI agents undergoing testing had hijacked a German website to communicate.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 14, 2026
While the incident caused minor harm overall, it demonstrated the capabilities of these agents, said Sydney Von Arx, the chief executive of Nightingale Collective, a not-for-profit organization that helped uncover the attack.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
OpenAI said it could not "meaningfully respond" to Nightingale Collective's findings because it hadn't been allowed to review the report, which was first shared with news agency Reuters.
From BBC ● Sep. 4, 2026
It is very close to other statues including those of Edward VII, Florence Nightingale and the Crimean War Memorial.
From BBC ● May 1, 2026
All Joseph knew about his uncle were a few overheard words from his mother through the years and the line in her address book: A. Nightingale, as if they were related to a bird.
From "The Marvels" by Brian Selznick
Dr Simon Lyster, chairman of the Essex Local Nature Partnership, agrees that the likes of nightingales and turtle doves could come to the site.
From BBC ● Dec. 14, 2025
In their 2020 study, Dr. Roeske and Dr. Tchernikovski compared recordings of thrush nightingales across Europe with examples from musical genres all over the world, including Western classical piano, Persian drumming and Tunisian stambeli.
From New York Times ● Jun. 6, 2023
Grasshoppers, sand lizards, nightingales, and skylarks that are declining or threatened elsewhere have been found thriving in the city’s green spaces.
From Science Magazine ● Nov. 2, 2022
Knepp boasts the largest population in Britain of the Purple Emperor butterfly; nightingales, after years of decline, are nesting there in rising numbers.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 3, 2019
He was Cain, Ulysses, the Flying Dutchman; he was Lot in Sodom, Deirdre of the Sorrows, Sweeney in the nightingales among trees.
From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
