3

Should I refer to 16:00 o'clock as afternoon or as evening?

In winter, when the days are short, and it becomes dark already at this time already in many countries, and therefore it is not clear to me how people in the UK for example, where this phenomenon also common, refer to this time.

Virtuous Legend
  • 27,128
  • 196
  • 415
  • 597

3 Answers3

4

There is no strict agreement on what "afternoon" and "evening" mean. But generally, "afternoon" refers to the time between 12 p.m. (noon) and 6 p.m. I don't think the sun being out or not has much bearing beyond standard time changing to daylight savings time and back.

Some people might prefer to say evening starts when the sun goes down. This is a traditional definition of evening. But as far as converting that idea to a specific point in time, most people would agree that 5 p.m. is still technically afternoon, whether or not the sun is out.

If you want to be more specific, you could refer to anything between noon and 2 p.m. as early afternoon, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. as mid afternoon and 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. as late afternoon.

Ringo
  • 7,718
  • 17
  • 31
  • Based on what I've read, the time for evening is from the sunset time. Then if we refer to this time as afternoon it contradict. Isn't it? Now, I know that technically whole 12 hours can be called "afternoon", the same as PM (past midday) used for the same purpose worldwide. – Virtuous Legend Dec 25 '17 at 20:05
  • 1
    @Manifestation_Peculiarity I second Ringo's answer: There is no agreement on what constitutes afternoon vs. evening. It varies by person, location, and context. – Andrew Dec 25 '17 at 20:47
  • 2
    I second @Andrew’s comment, especially the part about context. When does summer start? Schoolteachers might tell you it starts on the day after the last school day. For summer tourism destinations in the U.S., it starts on Memorial Day weekend. For astronomers, it starts on the day of the summer solstice. The boundary between afternoon and evening works much the same way: a scheduler might say that the evening shift begins at 7 PM, a television programming guilde might say 6 PM, and a ranger at a national park might say that evening begins at sundown. – J.R. Dec 26 '17 at 00:48
  • Further reading: https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/8954/the-exact-time-of-evening-and-night – Ringo Dec 26 '17 at 05:51
  • Using events like sunrise and sunset as markers for different sections of the day is a centuries-old idea -- and a very sensible one if you lived in the age before clocks. But I personally don't think it makes much sense to adhere strongly to these ancient definitions when we have watches and phones that can tell us the time with unfailing precision. It's much more practical to say evening always starts around 6 p.m. than to be modifying that time constantly depending on time of year. – Ringo Dec 26 '17 at 06:25
2

It is worth noting that other similar questions have been closed as off-topic as the answers are 'primarily opinion-based'. People may well have a different opinion as to when the evening begins. I personally think 4 pm is too early to be considered evening, but here are some things you should consider:

  • Most people work during the daytime and go home in the evening. The most standard working hours for most people are from 9 am until 5 pm. It is unlikely people working these hours would consider anything before 5 pm to be "evening".

  • The etymology of the word "evening" means the coming of the end of the day. You're probably familiar with the "eve" of something being the moment or day just before it (eg Christmas Eve). As midnight is the time when a new day begins it would be odd to say that 4 pm, which is closer to 12 noon than it is to midnight, is before the eve of the next day and not after noon.

  • Many people refer to their dinner, or last main meal of the day as their evening meal. This time of course varies and may have an influence on what time people consider "evening".

Astralbee
  • 100,700
  • 2
  • 111
  • 222
1

I might refer to 5 in the evening, especially if it was dark, but I would never refer to 4 in the evening (or even 4.30 in the evening), even if it was expected to be dark - nor do I recall hearing others do so.

6 is probably the most conventional dividing-line: for what it's worth, Lexico defines the evening as "usually from about 6 p.m. to bedtime" ( Lexico ).

Note: there is no such thing as "16:00 o'clock". We only use "o'clock" with twelve-hour times. We also usually only add phrases like "in the evening", "in the afternoon", "this evening" to 12-hour times - it would be unusual to say "at 16:00 this afternoon", because the main purpose of the phrase "this afternoon" is usually as a disambiguator to clarify that you don't mean 4 a.m. That's not needed when you're using the 24-hour clock. We would definitely not say "16:00 p.m." (this is occasionally seen, but is an error). Of course, in the US the 24-hour clock is rarely used except in a few specific contexts (and is so far removed from ordinary life that it is dubed "military time"); in the UK, it is fairly common in writing, but the 12-hour clock still predominates in speech except when discussing or relaying times that are written in the 24-hour format.

rjpond
  • 23,067
  • 2
  • 43
  • 77