My girlfriend (native German, but lived in the UK for many years) and I (native German, spent a little time in the UK but not nearly nowhere as much) attended a festive dinner last night, and one topic of the conversation (in English) was Christmas customs in different countries. I wanted to make the point that in Germany, the main Christmas event, when the family comes together for a large meal, carols are sung and children get their presents, is on December 24, around 5pm; and I worded that by saying that it’s “in the evening of the 24th”. My girlfriend (who loves correcting my English) pointed out that this was an incorrect or at least misleading way of saying it, because “the evening of” a day was the day before, so “the evening of the 24th” was actually the 23rd. The correct way of saying it would, in her view, have been “on the 24th in the evening”.
It did, of course, not start a major dispute, but my view on it is that it’s “the eve” which means the day before a date, not “the evening”, and that “the evening of the 24th” could - certainly from the context of the conversation, but IMHO also semantically - not mean the 23rd.
So what do dopers think? (Im not asking to have a dispute settled, but to get insight into a semantic matter.)
I can’t offer anything authoritative on general usage throughout the Anglophone sphere, but I think everyone I’ve ever spoken to would agree that ‘the evening of’ any date is the later part of that day, never the day before.
‘Eve’ only means the day before in a direct phrase like ‘Christmas Eve’ or ‘New Year’s Eve’. It sort of requires that the day have a name, like holidays do. You’d never use ‘November 16th Eve’ to talk about November 15th.
If someone said the ‘evening of Christmas’, they would be referring to the dark hours of December 25th.
ETA: I should say that I live on the US West Coast, so maybe things are different in the UK. I should also say that I can imagine someone saying ‘4th of July Eve’ to refer to July 3, but that’s because Americans refer to our Independence Day holiday as ‘the Fourth of July’, so that’s sort of the name of that day to us USAers.
There is an ambiguity in the English “eve”, which at least poetically has been used to mean what we now call evening of the current day (I’m thinking of Milton’s 'From morning until noon he fell,/From noon till dewy eve"). But we do now make the distinction you do and “evening” isn’t used to mean the evening before.
But in German (I may be wrong) AFAIK “abend” serves for both purposes, at least for special days such as Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. That may be the source of confusion.
I wonder - not altogether seriously - if there’s some psycho-cultural relation to the way the German colloquial abbreviation “halb acht” would mean 7.30, but the (British)English “half eight” would mean 8.30.
I’ve been speaking English as a native for over 65 years.
If someone invited me to drop round on ‘the evening of the 24th’ I’d turn up sometime after 18.00 on the 24th.
To continue the wonderment, I would also question the difference in German and English about “next weekday”.
If it is Wednesday, and I mention “next Friday”, I mean the Friday which is over a week away. My husband, also American, understands it this way as well. If I wanted to talk about the Friday that is in 2 days, I would say “this Friday”.
All of the native German speakers we know, if speaking on Wednesday about “next Friday” they would be speaking about the Fridy that is 2 days later.
This is one of the reasons I always add dates which mentioning weekdays.
I think widespread German usage would be to say “on Friday” (am Freitag) for the Friday of this week (i.e., the day after tomorrow if I’m saying it on Wednesday) and “next Friday” (nächsten Freitag) for the Friday of the week after that. But I agree it’s ambiguous, and my personal usage is to say “this Friday” (diesen Freitag) or “Friday next week” (Freitag nächste Woche) to avoid ambiguity.
I agree with everything you’ve said here, but I wonder if “the evening of” used to mean “the evening before” in an archaic usage that is the origin of “Christmas/New Year’s Eve.”
I also wonder if there’s a connection with “a quarter of…” to mean “15 minutes before” an hour. That’s something I’d never say and don’t really hear much, but apparently it’s a thing.
I agree with the others that this is unquestionably wrong. Your girlfriend is confusing two different meanings of “eve”. The first meaning is the poetic sense, now considered mostly archaic, where it means “evening”, but it’s rarely used that way today.
The other meaning refers literally to the day preceding a religious holiday or some other important day, and by extension, it can also refer figuratively to any time period preceding some important event or historical development. Thus we have the literal meaning of “Christmas Eve” as the day before Christmas (the entire day of December 24), and figurative phrases like “on the eve of the revolution” meaning, in general, some arbitrary time period shortly before the event occurred.
The phrase “on (or in) the evening of the 24th” unambiguously refers to just what it says, the evening of the 24th.
You are correct - at least in the US, I can’t guarantee that the UK is the same. The evening of the 24th is after 5 or 6pm on the 24th - “eve” refers to the day before an event - whether it’s Christmas or New Year’s , a wedding.
I suspect that the “eve” thing has to do with religious uses - a day in Judaism ( and I think Islam) starts at sunset, and in Catholicism observances start in the evening of the day before - I can fulfill my Sunday Mass obligation by attending Mass Saturday evening.
And of course, there are idiosyncratic uses, like "Christmas Eve day.
Surely you both realize English is not a language governed by strict rules of grammar to the same degree as German. And yes, I just called you Shirley.
This one, I find, is just plain ambiguous in English. I might, on Sunday, use “next Saturday” to refer to the day six days hence, and likewise might say “I went out with friends this Saturday”, clearly referring to a day in the past. On the other hand, the usage you describe is also natural to me. I think that, usually, “this” day refers to the closest one to the present, whether past or future, but that if precise timing is important (it often isn’t), one needs to be more specific.
I find that most such English usage is actually quite clear, with the exception of the word “next”, which I hate, because of the connotation of “the one after”. The one after what?
At any point in the week, “last Saturday” is clearly the most recent one in the past, and “this Saturday” is clearly the closest one in the future. “Next Saturday” is more ambiguous. I think most of the time “next Saturday” is intended to mean this coming Saturday if it’s said early in the week, but if it’s said on a Friday it probably means a week from tomorrow.
Oh boy! I get to be the one to mention that Halloween (or Hallowe’en) is a shortening of Hallow Even, that is, All Hallows Even(ing), i.e., the night before All Hallows or All Saints day, November 1st.