all night (long) vs overnight (2025)

Hello

I'm curious about using all night and overnight as adverbs. To my understanding
all night (long) means through the night while overnight means during the night.

Most dictionaries introduce 'all-night' as an adjective except yourdictionary.com
http://www.yourdictionary.com/all-night#americanheritage
But it's commonly used as an adverb like " I enjoyed party all night"

1. My questions can both all night and overnight mean 'during and through the night?'
Because there seems no big differences between two sentences below.

5 reasons why I run my slow cooker all night
How I Started Slow Cooking Overnight

http://www.thekitchn.com/why-i-cook-my-slow-cooker-meals-overnight-213532

2. Are the two expressions sometimes used interchangeably and sometimes not because of collocation matters?
I often see the following sentences We had party all night(no overnight). It snowed overnight(all night).

I hope you'll understand what I want to say here.Thank you in advance.
Have a good day.Pia

2. Are the two expressions sometimes used interchangeably and sometimes not because of collocation matters?
I often see the following sentences We had party all night(no overnight). It snowed overnight(all night).

Click to expand...

"All night" is the normal phrase in many situations. I tend to use "overnight" as an adjective: ...an overnight stay in Limon, Colorado.

"Overnight" is sometimes used as an adverb that means "during the (whole) night". That's how it's used in this example of yours: How I Started Slow Cooking Overnight

We had party all night(no overnight).

Click to expand...

This sentence is strange. I'd expect to see: We partied all night. Or: We had a party that lasted all night. You are right that "overnight" would be unusual in this sentence: We partied overnight. We had an overnight party.

owlman5 said:

"All night" is the normal phrase in many situations. I tend to use "overnight" as an adjective: ...an overnight stay in Limon, Colorado.

"Overnight" is sometimes used as an adverb that means "during the (whole) night". That's how it's used in this example of yours: How I Started Slow Cooking Overnight

This sentence is strange. I'd expect to see: We partied all night. Or: We had a party that lasted all night. You are right that "overnight" would be unusual in this sentence: We partied overnight. We had an overnight party.

Click to expand...

Hello,

What about:

- Our brain processes information overnight.

Thank you.

Hello, Tony.

Tony_M said:

What about:

- Our brain processes information overnight.

Click to expand...

Overnight is certainly possible in that sentence. If I wanted to say that our brains process information all night long, I would probably use throughout the night: Our brains process information throughout the night.

I assume that you used overnight with this meaning in mind:

WordReference Random House Learner's Dictionary of American English © 2023
o•ver•night /adv. ˈoʊvɚˈnaɪt; adj., n. ˈoʊvɚˌnaɪt/ adv.

1. for or during the night: We'll stay overnight and leave early tomorrow morning.

PIA Watss said:

I'm curious about using all night and overnight as adverbs.

Click to expand...

They might refer to the same time period, but "all night" often means "throughout that time period",
while "overnight" often compares the start and end of that time period.

He grew two inches overnight. (He was two inches taller at 8 am than he was at 10 pm)

He played computer games all night. (He played computer games non-stop from 10 pm to 8 am)

Tony_M said:

Our brain processes information overnight.

Click to expand...

This sentence says that the information was unprocessed at 10 pm, but processed at 8 am.
It doesn't say when that processing happened: maybe it only happened between 6 am and 8 am.

PIA Watss said:

2. Are the two expressions sometimes used interchangeably and sometimes not because of collocation matters?
I often see the following sentences We had party all night(no overnight). It snowed overnight(all night).

Click to expand...

"It snowed overnight" means that snow fell at some point or points during the night.
"It snowed all night" means that snow fell more or less continuously from dusk to dawn.