noctule

Borrowed from French noctule, a latinised scientific borrowing of the Italian nottola (refers to various birds or bats), inherited from Late Latin noctula, diminutive of Classical Latin noctua (“night-owl”), ultimately from Latin nox (“night”), from Proto-Indo-European *nókʷts. Per the OED, first attested in English in 1771.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈnɒktjuːl/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈnɑkt͡ʃul/

noctule (plural noctules)

1. A bat, of the genus Nyctalus, that lives in tree hollows.
   • 2019, Julia Armfield, “The Great Awake”, in Salt Slow, Picador, page 25:

     We were all still growing used to the night-time, the blue-veined hours of morning that lay only lightly, the white spiders and noctule bats.

• →? Catalan: nòctul
• → Spanish: nóctulo

• Lecount

Coined in 1760 by Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton (quoted below) as a latinised borrowing of the Italian nottola (name for various bats and birds).

• IPA^(key): /nɔk.tyl/

• Audio:

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noctule f (plural noctules)

1. noctule
   • 1760, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton, Histoire Naturelle, volume VIII:

     La troisième espèce, que nous appellerons la noctule, du mot italien nottola...

     The third species, which we shall call the noctule, from the Italian word nottola...

• → English: noctule
  • →? Catalan: nòctul
  • → Spanish: nóctulo
• → New Latin: noctula

• “noctule”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.