Another word for night that means the period from sunset to sunrise [closed]

I'm looking for a synonym to night, that doesn't include night in it (nighttime), that indicates the period from sunset to sunrise. Since evening is the period from sunset to bedtime it doesn't fill my needs.

Edit-Here is the basic idea of the sentence I want to use. This refers to a location at 50°N latitude.

Though the winter nights were long in his hometown, the summer days with the many hours of sunlight and the long blue twilight lasted for most of the _______.

Twilight is the period of time after sunset and before sunrise when the refraction and scattering of sunlight by the atmosphere causes a glow in the sky. At latitudes closer to the poles twilight can last most of the time between sunset and sunrise and there is a very short period of time when the sky is really dark. I want to communicate that for most of the night the sky will have a twilight glow.

Some synonyms I found and why they won't work.

evening, midnight, nightfall, witching-hour, before dawn-a narrow period of time, not the entire night

obscurity-meaningless

the dark hours, darkness-doesn't make sense in terms of twilight

nox, nocturnal-won't work in context

I don't want to repeat the word night or hours in this sentence or split it up to have a word repeating in consecutive sentences.

Is there another word in English that describes that entire period?

I've since learned that night comes from an Indo-European root that predates Greek and Latin. Almost every European language uses some form based on that root. I'll just have to accept there is no other word in English that describes the period from sunset to sunrise.

Solution 1:

There is only the rather explanatory phrase from dusk to dawn:

The period from sunset to sunrise in each twenty-four hours (Wikipedia)

The Wikipedia entry for night gives some clear coordinates, but no synonyms.

The closest period of the night I could find was

small hours (also UK wee small hours, early hours); (US also wee hours)

It means

the early hours of the morning, between twelve o'clock at night and the time when the sun rises (Cambridge)

• There were a dozen witnesses prepared to swear that McGuire had remained until the small hours, drinking coffee and quoting scripture. (Bringle, Mary DEATH OF AN UNKNOWN MAN)

Without knowing for what context you need the expression, I am not sure. Yet you can be certain that there is not much choice.

Addition:

After you edited your question and provided a concrete example of how you would use the expression I thought you could only find some metaphor for your sentence:

Though the winter nights were long in his hometown, the summer days had many hours of sunlight and the long blue twilight lasted for most of the dark tides of Nyx. (expression used by H.S. Crow in Lunora and the Monster King)

There is however a slight problem with your sentence, which is why I inserted a verb to make it stand.

Nyx is the Greek goddess (or personification) of the night. (Wikipedia)

Or you could avoid the problem by saying:

The many hours of sunlight and the long blue twilight (from dusk to dawn) during the summer made up for the long winter nights in his hometown.

Solution 2:

How much day and night vary depends on the latitude in which you find yourself. There are many phrases that only refer to the period of full darkness: "the dead of night" is an example. But in general, in the tropics, night and day vary only slightly, so that the time of full darkness is night and the time of broad daylight are roughly the same all year round. The further North you are the bigger the variation in length: In the UK daylight on midsummer's days was 16hrs 38m., and 'night' was less than half that. In winter it's the other way round. Even further North, the difference is even more extreme. So mere astrophysics prevents terms for day and night which apply consistently everywhere and all the time.

The dead of night, is a way of identifying that time when it is dark and people are generally in bed asleep. If we want fine distinctions, we use phrases. evening can refer to some time between tea time and bed time. If greater precision is needed, we can talk of early evening and late evening. These will be independent of when it gets dark. We can even interpolate mid evening, if we choose. There is no set time for these intervals, but I would guess most people would say evening starts at some time after 5pm and well before 7pm. Late evening starts some time after nine. If we want to be more precise than that, well, that what clock time is for.

You would have to have a very powerful reason for wanting a precise word for 'night' and a very clear definition what you wanted to count as night. It is true that our modern notion is a kind of compromise between daylight time and sleep time. But sleep time varies even more than solar time does, depending on the type of work people do, if they have any (plenty of people work at 'night'), the day of the week (many people 'stay up late') on a Friday and Saturday, particularly avid partygoers, who may stay up to the wee small hours (a useful expression of Scottish origin). If you are French, you might enjoy a nuit blanche and not go to bed (or, at least, to sleep) at all. In English, this excess can be called an all-nighter, defined in the Cambridge English dictionary as:-

An event that lasts all night

So I am afraid you are seeking that linguistic will-o'the'wisp a single word for something impossible to be pinned down in that way for, as I say, astrophysical and societal reasons.

Solution 3:

To fill the gap in the sentence you provided:

"Though the winter nights were long in his hometown, the summer days with the many hours of sunlight and the long blue twilight lasted for most of the evening."

"Night" suggests the time when the sun is well below the horizon and it is dark. But "twilight" and "evening" both suggest a time when there is still a little sunlight though not much.