night-fall

night-fall (countable and uncountable, plural night-falls)

1. Archaic form of nightfall.
   • 1848, William J[oseph] O’N[eill] Daunt, Personal Recollections of the Late Daniel O’Connell, M.P., volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], page 149:

     It was a comfortable thing for a social pair of fellow-travellers to get out of their chaise at night-fall, and to find at the inn (it was then kept by a cousin of mine, a Mrs. Cotter), a roaring fire, in a clean, well-furnished parlour, the whitest table-linen, the best beef, the sweetest and tenderest mutton, the fattest fowl, the most excellent wines (claret and Madeira were the high wines then—they knew nothing about Champagne), and the most comfortable beds.

   • 1850 May, Jonathan Freke Slingsby, “Welcome as Flowers in May”, in The Dublin University Magazine, volume 35, number 209, page 557:

     Full many a score that lone maid counted o’er
     Of day-dawns and night-falls—a year to the day—

   • 1885, Richard F[rancis] Burton, transl. and editor, “The Second Kalandar’s Tale. [Night 12.]”, in A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, now Entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night […], Shammar edition, volume I, [London]: […] Burton Club […], →OCLC, page 115:

     Then he set meat and drink before me; and I ate and drank and he with me; and we conversed freely till night-fall, when he cleared me a place in a corner of his shop and brought me a carpet and a coverlet.