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Allin

evening

nounverbverbtop 1 000 in film dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈiːv.nɪŋ//
  • United States//ˈiv.nɪŋ//
  • //ˈiːvənɪŋ//

The time of day between afternoon and night.

noun

  1. 1

    The time of day between afternoon and night.

    Toward evening, there was heavy rain.

    I met my wife on a summer's evening in 1999.

    Energy has seldom been found where we need it when we want it. Ancient nomads, wishing to ward off the evening chill and enjoy a meal around a campfire, had to collect wood and then spend time and effort coaxing the heat of friction out from between sticks to kindle a flame. With more settled people, animals were harnessed to capstans or caged in treadmills to turn grist into meal.

  2. 2

    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.

    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.

    That the young Mr. Churchills liked—but they did not like him coming round of an evening and drinking weak whisky-and-water while he held forth on railway debentures and corporation loans. Mr Barrett, however, by fawning and flattery, seemed to be able to make not only Mrs. Churchill but everyone else do what he desired.

  3. 3

    figurativeA concluding time period; a point in time near the end of something; the beginning of the end of something.

    It was the evening of the Roman Empire.

    The latter [locomotive] had worked on the Hampton Court branch for many years, and was spending the evening of its life in the West Country.

  4. 4

    A party or gathering held in the evening.

    A few Gorllewin Cymru/West Wales Branch members attended an evening at the Dragon Hotel, Swansea, titled Photographic Techniques in Industry.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₁ep-der. Proto-Indo-European *h₁épsder. Proto-Indo-European *h₁epider. Proto-Germanic *ēbanþs Proto-West Germanic *ābanþ Old English ǣfen Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ti Proto-Germanic *-ōną Proto-West Germanic *-ōn Proto-West Germanic *-ōjan Old English -ian Old English ǣfnian Proto-Germanic *-ungō Old English -ung Old English ǣfnung Middle English evening English evening From Middle English evening, evenyng, from Old English ǣfnung, from ǣfnian (“to become evening”), from ǣfen (“eve”) (from Proto-West Germanic *ābanþ, from Proto-Germanic *ēbanþs), corresponding to even + -ing.

verb

  1. 1

    Also a form of evenpresent participle and gerund of even

Etymology

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

verb

  1. 1

    Also a form of evenepresent participle and gerund of evene

Forms

plural
evenings
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).