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.
Through the years, she was often compared to her elder sister - who was revered as the "nightingale" of Bollywood and died in 2022 - but Bhosle built a distinct identity.
From BBC ● Apr. 13, 2026
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
I wonder if even Janet Malcolm might have given a pass to this devoted biographer and his own bow to a nightingale.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 3, 2023
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
Somewhere near, a passing bell was tolling; the dogs all round the neighbourhood were howling; and in our shrubbery, seemingly just outside, a nightingale was singing.
From "Dracula" by Bram Stoker
Sydney Von Arx is chief executive of Nightingale Collective, the not-for-profit organization whose data inspired the September swarm-chasing spree.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026
The Nightingale data points to another type of phenomenon: agents trying to cheat during training runs, in which OpenAI tries to shape the bots’ behavior.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026
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
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
Albert Nightingale laughed, but it wasn’t a friendly laugh.
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
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
Did the nightingales of Berkeley Square know about this?
From The Guardian ● Nov. 19, 2019
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
The roses were in bloom, two nightingales soliloquized in the boskage, a cuckoo was just going out of tune among the lime trees.
From "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley
Spin the wheel and learn a new word!
Get a wordDefinitions 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.
