"0-dark-hundred" means an otherwise unspecified time of night; some time when it is dark out. It is one of many casual words teens pick up from friends, social media, music or sport, and on its own it carries no particular warning. If you hear your teen use it, it is fair to ask what they mean by it in their friend group, since meanings drift quickly. Asking out of curiosity rather than alarm tends to keep the conversation open and useful.
0-dark-hundred
(chiefly, US, _, military slang) An otherwise unspecified time of night; some time when it is dark out.
Etymology timeline
Born ~1980 · no dated citations yetGen X eraSee decade cohort →
Definitions
Global
#1·Apr 27, 2026Global
(chiefly, US, _, military slang) An otherwise unspecified time of night; some time when it is dark out.
Which is precisely why I'd volunteered as point man on this little jaunt, prowling and growling up the unlit stairwell of a Cairo slum at 0-dark-hundred to catch my quarry napping on his bedroll.
For parents
"0-dark-hundred" means an otherwise unspecified time of night; some time when it is dark out. It is one of many casual words teens pick up from friends, social media, music or sport, and on its own it carries no particular warning. If you hear your teen use it, it is fair to ask what they mean by it in their friend group, since meanings drift quickly. Asking out of curiosity rather than alarm tends to keep the conversation open and useful.
For ESL learners
"0-dark-hundred" is informal English meaning an otherwise unspecified time of night; some time when it is dark out. It is mainly used in North American English. A more formal or neutral equivalent would be something like "an otherwise unspecified time of night" expressed in standard vocabulary. A common mistake is to assume "0-dark-hundred" can replace its standard equivalent in every register; keep it for spoken or casual situations and use the formal form in writing. If you are a B2 or C1 learner, it is useful to recognise this word when you hear or read it, but think carefully about whether the situation really calls for it before using it yourself.
Heard in the wild
“And there were, I would say, dozens to maybe a couple hundred people waiting already at 0-dark-hundred here at every checkpoint...”
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For specific readers
Why is this section here?
Slang is read by different audiences for very different reasons. The For parents view re-explains the term in plain, non-judgemental language so a caregiver can understand what their child means without needing the surrounding subculture. The For English learners view focuses on register (when it's safe to use), formal alternatives, and common mistakes — what a textbook won't teach you.
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Regional slang from around the English-speaking world — British, Australian, Irish, Caribbean, Nigerian, Filipino, AAVE, and the hyphenated-English dialects that make the internet sound local.
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(slang, Southern US, Appalachian) nighttime.
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(obsolete, UK, thieves') The night.
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Obsolete English thieves' cant for nighttime or 'the night', used by 16th and 17th century criminal underworld communities to refer to the dark hours when illicit activity was most easily conducted. Part of a rich vocabulary of Elizabethan and Jacobean criminal slang documented in canting dictionaries of the period. 'Darkmans' pairs with 'lightmans' (daytime). Today the word is of purely historical and literary interest, appearing in period crime fiction, academic study of cant, and occasionally in fantasy or historical RPG settings.
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An Appalachian and Southern US expression for nighttime — specifically for pitch darkness, when it is completely dark outside. The double darkness intensifier ('black' + 'dark') is characteristic of Appalachian English's tendency toward expressive doubling. Used in rural speech to mean the dead of night or total darkness.
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