لَيْلَةٌ night in Arabic
لَيْلَةٌ is how you say “night” in Arabic.
Root ل ي ل l-y-l. noun (feminine singulative of layl). laylah.
Arabic
English
The audio uses AI voices.
Meaning of night in Arabic
- a night the basic sense: one night as a discrete unit of time, as opposed to layl, the generic word for night/darkness
- tonight used adverbially for the current night, as in phrases like 'I saw it tonight in my sleep'
- a night's journey the distance or stage of travel covered in the course of one night
Example sentence
كل ليلة ينزل سبعون ألف ملك من السماء إلى الأرض إلى مسجد بيت المقدس
Every night, seventy thousand angels descend from the sky to the earth, to the mosque of Bayt al-Maqdis.
لَيْلَةٍ night
layla means 'night'; the '-in' ending — 'every night'.
The English is machine-translated.
Practise this word in the app
One tap gives you the meaning, a grammar note and audio.
Add the words you don’t know. Practise them with spaced repetition.
Free. No ads. No subscription.
An account is needed in the app.
How it is used
Classical texts use laylah both for a single night and, adverbially, for 'tonight.' It also appears in set proverbial phrases, such as comparing 'tonight' to 'last night' when describing a recurring situation.
Words from the same root
- لَيْلٌ night, nighttime, in general
- لَيَالٍ nights
- لَيْلِىٌّ nocturnal, of the night
- لَيْلَى the name Layla, and poetically wine
- مُلَايَلَةٌ a night-by-night arrangement or hire
More example sentences
قَالَ نَعَمْ أَسْرَيْنَا لَيْلَتَنَا،
He said, "Yes, we spent the night."
لَيْلَتَنَا our night
A noun with the pronoun '-na' (our) fused on, meaning 'our night', and it acts as the time-stretch covered by the verb, so it takes the object ending. The attached '-na' marks the whole group as the possessor. Arabic can use a bare noun like this to express 'for/through the night'.
Common questions
- How do you say "night" in Arabic?
- لَيْلَة (laylah) for one specific night; the related لَيْل (layl) is the general word for night or darkness.
- What is the difference between layl and laylah?
- Layl (لَيْل) is the generic, mass-noun sense of night/darkness, while laylah (لَيْلَة) is the singulative — a single, countable night.
Related words
Definitions summarised from Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon (E. W. Lane, 1863–1893).