lucubration

From the Latin lūcubrātiō (“nighttime study”), from lūcubrō (“work by artificial light”), from lūx (“light”).

• Rhymes: -eɪʃən

lucubration (countable and uncountable, plural lucubrations)

1. Intense and prolonged study or meditation; especially, late at night.
   • 1776, Edward Gibbon, “chapter III”, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volumes (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: […] W[illiam] Strahan; and T[homas] Cadell, […], →OCLC:

     The virtue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was of a severer and more laborious kind. It was the well-earned harvest of many a learned conference, of many a patient lecture, and many a midnight lucubration.

2. The product of such study; often, writings.
   • 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC:

     With his own ghostly voice, he had exhorted me, on the sacred consideration of my filial duty and reverence towards him,—who might reasonably regard himself as my official ancestor,—to bring his mouldy and moth-eaten lucubrations before the public.

   • 1868, Carl Schurz, The Road to Peace — a Solid, Durable Peace:

     There is General Blair. True, his lucubrations on negro supremacy are ludicrous enough, but it will not do to speak lightly of his ability. There is power in his organization.

   • 1929, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Disintegration Machine‎:

     'You have been good enough to allude to me in one of your recent lucubrations,' he said, shaking the paper at me.