What does "postmidnight" mean?

After midnight, but before dawn.

What is a synonym for "postmidnight"?

Common synonyms include: early hours, predawn, small hours, wee hour, wee hours, wee small hours.

Postmidnight

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective

1
After midnight, but before dawn. not-comparable
"Near-synonym: predawn"

Synonyms

All synonyms

early hours predawn small hours wee hour wee hours wee small hours

Example

More examples

"Hussein's being taken to his execution from his cell in an American military detention center in the postmidnight chill of Saturday had a surreal and even cinematic quality."

Etymology

From post- + midnight.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.