Lucubrate Work Midnight Hours Loo Kyoo Brayt Verb Intr Study

lucubrate /LOO-kyoo-brayt/

verb intr.

To work (such as study, write, discourse) laboriously or learnedly. 

[Here's a word that literally encapsulates the idiom "to burn the midnight oil". It's derived from Latin lucubrare (to work by lamplight), from lucere (to shine). Ultimately from the Indo-European root leuk- (light) that's resulted in other words such as lunar, lunatic, light, lightning, lucid, illuminate, illustrate, translucent, lux, and lynx.]

"So MPs have voted to lucubrate less. To lucubrate fewer? To sit for fewer midnight hours. To work less antisocial hours. To have less/fewer late nights." - Philip Howard; Less is More Prevalent; The Times (London, UK); Nov 1, 2002.