And is that the same, or not quite the same, as “Friday week”?
I don’t know. I don’t know what “Friday week” means – that’s entirely unfamiliar to me.
I’m pretty sure in some varieties of British and European English it mean a week from this coming Friday. I don’t think it’s commonly used any more.
Concur - it has to be the evening before some named, significant day or event in order to reasonably imply the evening before. There are other similar constructions that might not refer to a singular day, for example, ‘the eve of war’ is the night before a war started.
But ‘eve’ and ‘evening’ are not the same thing anyway;
Christmas Eve = the latter part of the 24th
Christmas evening = probably the end of the 25th (although I think many people would probably resort to ‘the evening of Christmas day’ or ‘Christmas day evening’ in order to be unambiguous).
Correct: It’s Monday 16th today.
Shall we go out Friday?
This Friday? No - I’m busy; How about Friday week?
‘Friday’ (without any other qualifier) = Friday 20th
‘This Friday’ also = Friday 20th
‘Friday Week’ = Friday 27th
‘Next Friday’ = (probably) also Friday 27th
(at least that’s how it works where I live in southern England)
Lately I can hardly hear a word without looking it up at Wiktionary! Its examples show evening and eve to have almost opposite meanings: ‘after’ and ‘before’ resp.
It was the evening of the Roman Empire.
the eve of a scientific discovery
(The ‘-n’ was deleted from (the now obsolete) ‘even’ because it was mistaken for an inflection.)
You’re right, you girlfriend is wrong. No-one in the modern English-speaking world would use “the evening of X” to mean “X’s Eve”
Having read the explanations of “Friday week”: yes, that’s the same thing as “a week from Friday”.
Not be confused with a week of Sundays.
Is that a week off from work, or a whole week spent at church?
There is also “a week on Friday”, perhaps depending on the context, also meaning the same.
It’s seven weeks, possibly give or take a day or two, but mostly much longer altogether.
Ah! Thanks.
Is that like “a month of Sundays,” which just means “a very long time”?
Yep. I’ve heard that to. The first time I heard it was in response to someone saying a job would be complete on Sunday - followed by “Better not be a week of Sundays”, meaning it was taking too long. I think “a month of Sundays” is closer to “never”.
Sound more British to me. They also say “half seven” to mean 7:30, and I find it flows quite nicely off the tongue but would only cause confusion 'round these here parts.
Depends on which side of the international date line you are on. The Brits are funny about that. They had particular interest in the topic since at one time the sun never set on their empire. Under their system, today can be eithr yesterday or tomorrow depending on the direction from which you cross the line. Hence the grammatical confusion.
Yes, I have been drinking.
Not to this Brit -I’ve only ever heard it from Americans. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s an old usage that died out here but survived across the Atlantic.
I’ve lived in the US for nearly 40 years and I’ve only heard it from British or Irish people, either expats or immigrants.
My grandmother used to say this, but I assume she picked it up living in the UK for 40 years (from the late 60s on) not from her life in India and Pakistan before that. She mostly lived in Bradford, but I imagine she’d have spent most of her time with the South Asian community there.
In my central Ohio dialect, I say things like:
“It’s a quarter til three.” = 2:45
“It’s half past ten.” = 10:30
“It’s five til eight.” = 7:55
“It’s twenty past five.” = 5:20
The pattern is “til” indicates before the top of the hour, “past” indicates after. Fractions (“quarter”, “half”) are in hours, whole numbers (“five”, “ten”, “twenty”) are in minutes.