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🛏️ Bedtime signal 💡 Power loss
lights-out

lights-out

27 4.5
A set time in places like dorms when people must turn off lights to go to bed
  • noun
  • /laɪts aʊt/
translation icon : hora de apagar las luces
  • The camp leader announced lights-out at 10 PM so everyone could get a good night's sleep.
  • lights out at 10:30 p.m.
  • lights out by 10:30
  • lights out at 8:30

Examples

  • Miss Clavel: Lights out; girls.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • For the next two weeks, your day begins at 6:30 a.m. and ends with lights out at 9:30 p.m.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • Now it's time for lights out.

    Sexual Predator (2001)

  • Half hour to lights out.

    Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988)

  • Soon it was lights out.

    Fiction book (2001)

  • "Lights out at eight for you, same as everybody.

    Academic text (2007)

  • Nobody's allowed on the bunks till five minutes before lights out.

    The Longest Yard (1974)

  • Lights out at 10.

    Big George Foreman (2023)

  • Er, we have a strict lights-out policy at 9:00.

    The End We Start From (2023)

  • It's lights out at 10:20 PM, at which time the eight students packed into each 9'x12' room call it a day.

    Academic text (2005)

Synonyms

curfew
vslights-out
151 4.4

A rule that tells people to stay inside after a set evening time, for example a city or a parent

is an institutional scheduled time when lights are turned off for bedtime

Surface Forms

lights-out singular
lights-outs plural

Morphology

lights-out = light (transparent) = out + light + s

The meaning is directly inferable from 'lights' + 'out' describing lights being switched off; learners who know the components can derive the noun meaning (the scheduled time). [Postprocessing: moved 'out' from base_words to prefix]

Etymology

Lights-out comes from the simple order to put the lights 'out', meaning 'off', at a set time in places like schools, camps and the military. So, it refers to the scheduled time when lights must be turned off and people are expected to go to bed.