Can we stop indiscriminately referring to "am" hours as morning?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Right now for me (in Los Angeles, CA) it is 4:15am.

It is nighttime!
It is dark, most people are in bed.

Yet, people insist on referring to 4am as 4 in the morning! Why insist that morning comes with the changing of the day at 12am? Why can’t we wrap our heads aroun the idea that maybe night begins on one day then continues through the early hours of the next day?

Shouldn’t anything from sunset to sunrise be considered night? (I’ll make allowances for “evening”.)

The inconsistency seems to lie in whether or not we note the actual time. If one is awakened by a loud noise at 4am, in recounting the tale one might say:
“I awoke to a loud noise last night.” if not mentioning the specific time.
Yet if one chooses to mention the specific time it comes out:
“I awoke to a loud noise at 4 in the morning.”
It gets even worse when we say things like:
“I awoke last night at 4 in the morning.”

Why, people? Why?

“am” does NOT alway mean morning.

Anyone else want to share their humble opinion in this poll?
(That last sentence was added to justify being in this forum rather than MPISMS)
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2

It does seem weird to call 1AM the morning when it’s obviously the middle of the night. However, I think it’d be a good start if people could just stop saying things like ‘I had to get up at six AM in the morning’. It’s unusually widespread.

~ Isaac

3

It might have something to do with what time you had to get up or go to bed:

I had to get up at 3 in the morning to make it there on time.

I went to bed at 3 last night.

4

If I slept and woke up at 4:30, it’s morning. If I was partying like a rock star and I looked at the clock, it’s 4:30 at night. It just is.

5

Simple. People say “4 in the morning” to differentiate between “4 in the afternoon”.

Or is that “4 in the evening”? :wink:

6

When I read in the OP “12am” – well, that’s when I stopped reading.

7

Okay, if we call it night, how are we supposed to differentiate between the part of last night that happened yesterday, and the part of last night that happened today? This night and yesterday night? Or should we call all the dark hours of yesterday last night (or yesterday night, or whatever)? If we do that, how do we distinguish between the last night that happend at 4am yesterday and the last night that happened at 8pm yesterday? If we simply call of the time between sunset yesterday and sunrise today “last night”, what about the winter, when it gets dark around 5pm, and doesn’t get light again till around 7 am? When you say “6:00 last night” which 6:00 do you mean? After all, it was dark at both 6:00’s.

Unless you’ve got some practical suggestions for dealing with this kind of stuff, I’m just going to continue calling 4am “bedtime” and be done with it.

8

The obvious and simple solution is for everyone to adopt the 24-hour clock the military uses. 0400 vs. 1600 = no confusion.

“In the middle of the night” and “in the wee hours of the morning” both translate to “0-dark-30.”

9

The situation becomes more confused when you work midnights.

To me, 8 or 9 in the morning constitutes “last night” because I havn’t gone to bed yet.

My wife and I have had some confused conversations about that.

“Last night”

“You mean this morning?”

“Whatever”

10

So if I lived in the far north and it’s summertime, when the sun rises at 3:30 am (or, indeed, never sets), would it then be acceptible to the OP to refer to 4:00 am as “morning”?

11

Correct people about this. Eventually they’ll get sick of it and stop telling you about the mundane details of thier sleeping patterns.

My watch can be set to 24 hour time by god I want to use it and not look like a jackass!!

12

According to dictionary.com, it can:

morn·ing ( P ) Pronunciation Key (môrnng)
n.
The first or early part of the day, lasting from midnight to noon or from sunrise to noon.
The dawn.
The first or early part; the beginning: the morning of a new nation.

13

Morning and night really are not opposites. Morning as stated above is 12:00 am to 11:59 am and evening is 12:00pm to 11:59 pm. Day is the opposite of night, the sun is up its day time, the sun sets, it’s night time. Morning is a constant, the same every day, night is a variable, it changes depending on the tilt of the earth. When used in the proper context, there should be no confusion.

14

The hospital where I work uses military time for just this reason. No more confusion.

I say go for it.

15

And “a.m.” is so much faster to say than “in the morning” (having only half the syllables, and all).

16

I agree with Kalhoun. 4:30 AM is either a really early morning or a really late night. The night/morning change happens when I go to sleep and wake up again. Of course, even if I haven’t slept, somewhere around 7 in the AM I start calling it morning, which throws a wrench in my rule.

17

My humble opinion is that it is much to do about nothin’. Who gives a rat’s behind. It is too late in the morning to worry about it still being dark outside.