Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🌙 Light from the Moon 💼 To work a second job
to moonlight

to moonlight

30 6.1
To work at a second job in addition to your main job, often at night
  • verb
  • /ˈmuːnˌlaɪt/
translation icon : tener un segundo empleo
  • After finishing her day job, she moonlights as a bartender at a local pub.

Doctors found themselves moonlighting as cab drivers.

Autoplay Next

Examples

  • Wisniweski and Kleine (1983), for example, believe that teachers moonlight to supplement low salaries.

    Academic text (1992)

  • Are you working for the agency or are you moonlighting?

    Elephant White (2011)

  • People were allowed to moonlight to make extra money.

    Academic text (1999)

  • Now I moonlight as an archaeologist in my mind.

  • Or he moonlights as a cop.

    The Batman (2022)

  • At the time, he was moonlighting for a company that was buying up mine sites.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • Ben moonlights as a comedian.

    Audacity (2015)

  • Doctors found themselves moonlighting as cab drivers.

    Patrick Boyle

  • Urban workers are moonlighting at collective village and rural enterprises or starting their own businesses.

    Academic text (1996)

  • John (pseudonym) is 23, a fifth-year medical student who moonlights as a singer in several dance clubs.

    Academic text (1991)

Compounds

moonlight flit
  • Archaic
9.9

A secret leaving of a home at night to avoid paying debts

moonlight requisition
  • Archaic
9.9

A secret request or action done at night without official permission

Surface Forms

moonlight infinitive
moonlighted past
moonlighting present participle
moonlights third person singular
moonlit past participle

Morphology

moonlight = moonlight (opaque) = moon + light

The verb is a conversion from the noun 'moonlight', but the sense 'work a second job' is a figurative extension that is not directly predictable from the literal meanings of 'moon' and 'light'.

Etymology

The verb moonlight comes from the picture of someone working by the Moon's light, combining moon and light into the idea of night work. So to moonlight is to have a second job or to 'work at night' to earn extra money.