Evening
noun, verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 The time of day between afternoon and night. countable, uncountable
"Toward evening, there was heavy rain."
- 2 a conventional expression of greeting or farewell, used to wish someone a good evening wordnet
- 3 The time of the day between the approximate time of midwinter dusk and midnight (compare afternoon); the period after the end of regular office working hours. countable, uncountable
"At half-past nine on this Saturday evening, the parlour of the Salutation Inn, High Holborn, contained most of its customary visitors.[…] In former days every tavern of repute kept such a room for its own select circle, a club, or society, of habitués, who met every evening, for a pipe and a cheerful glass."
- 4 the latter part of the day (the period of decreasing daylight from late afternoon until nightfall) wordnet
- 5 A concluding time period; a point in time near the end of something; the beginning of the end of something. countable, figuratively, uncountable
"It was the evening of the Roman Empire."
Show 3 more definitions
- 6 the early part of night (from dinner until bedtime) spent in a special way wordnet
- 7 A party or gathering held in the evening. countable, uncountable
"A few Gorllewin Cymru/West Wales Branch members attended an evening at the Dragon Hotel, Swansea, titled Photographic Techniques in Industry."
- 8 a later concluding time period wordnet
- 1 present participle and gerund of even form-of, gerund, participle, present
- 2 present participle and gerund of evene form-of, gerund, participle, present
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"I usually take a shower in the evening."
Etymology
From Middle English evening, evenyng, from Old English ǣfnung, from ǣfnian < ǣfen (from Proto-West Germanic *ābanþ, from Proto-Germanic *ēbanþs), corresponding to even + -ing.
Inflected forms.
Related phrases
More for "evening"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.