by night / during the night (??)

[Faycelina]

Hi,
I have problem of overusing by night (at least I think so ). Please tell me what you'd use in following cases (I'll write what I use but it may be incorrect):

- I prefer driving by night.
- What were you doing by night? Why are you so tired?
- I love my city by night.
- He comes here by night to steel our apples.
- Why do you want to go shopping by night?

If these are incorrect (or at least some of them), please explain me in what cases I can use by night and in what cases other expressions.
Thanks in advance!

 

[Kumpel]

- I prefer driving at night.
- What were you doing last? night? Why are you so tired?
- I love my city at night. (But, I love the city by night - I think that one's just stylistic)
- He comes here by night to steel our apples. (by night sounds more 'poetic' I think - otherwise, I like during the night)
- Why do you want to go shopping at/during the night?

Just my opinion.

Lloyd

 

[soccergal]

I have to agree with Kumpel, mostly.
I would say he comes by here at night to steal...., but during the night is fine.
I would also choose at, rather than during, for Why do you want to go shoping....
My suggestions are a matter of personal preference. Kumpel is definitely correct.

 

[Faycelina]

Thanks a lot, guys!
And what about expression: I love going out by night?

 

[soccergal]

At would sound better in this sentence.

 

[coolieinblue]

hello,

To me 'by night' sounds quite like 'in the advent of night'.
How do you see this interpretation? Too rhetoric?

Thanks

 

[Silver_Biscuit]

'By night' is just another way of saying 'at night'. However, it can often sound rather archaic / poetic, and wouldn't often be used in normal speech. Just reading the thread title made me think of the Christmas carol, 'While shepherds watched their flocks by night'.
I do think 'I prefer driving by night' sounds fine, though.

I wouldn't know what someone meant if they said 'in the advent of night'. Do you mean when night is coming up, like dusk? It sounds weird, I wouldn't advise it.

 

[coolieinblue]

Silver_Biscuit, thank you for your advice

 

[e2efour]

The only one of the sentences I found odd is "What were you doing by night?" Only "during the night" seems to fit here.
For the others, I would alternate between by and at. Perhaps by is more what you would see in written English, I don't know.

A good way of seeing a lot of examples is to look at the British National Corpus, where I found 283 examples. http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/

 

[Faycelina]

Thanks, everybody for your help and advices! Especially big thanks to e2efour for the BNC! It's superb!

 

[panjandrum]

From the sticky thread at the top of this forum.

Corpora
The British National Corpus (BNC), around 100 million words, spoken and written:
http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/

An alternative, and more extensive search of the BNC (through a university website):
http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/

A corpus based on Time Magazine, also around 100 million words:
http://corpus.byu.edu/time/

Simple search through Collins (the dictionary publishers) Wordbank:
http://www.collins.co.uk/Corpus/CorpusSearch.aspx

The Compleat Lexical Tutor, a concordancer with rather limited corpora, but which allows you to choose the type of English you are most interested in:
http://www.lextutor.ca/

Glossanet, which uses online newspapers as corpora (in multiple languages):
http://glossa.fltr.ucl.ac.be/

The University of Michigan has several different corpora, one of which is a corpus of academic spoken English:
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/micase/

Latest addition for 2008! The Brigham Young University Corpus of American English:
http://www.americancorpus.org/