afternoon

• afternoone (archaic)

From Middle English afternone, after-non, equivalent to after- +‎ noon.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌɑːf.tə.ˈnuːn/
• (Scotland) IPA^(key): /af.təɾˈnʉːn/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌæf.tɚ.ˈnun/

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• Audio (UK)

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• Rhymes: -uːn

afternoon (plural afternoons)

1. The part of the day from noon or lunchtime until sunset, evening, or suppertime or 6pm.
   • 1601, Arthur Dent, Plaine Mans Path-way to Heauen, page 138:

     These men serue God in the fore-noone, and the diuell in the afternoone.

   • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 4, in The Celebrity:

     The Celebrity, by arts unknown, induced Mrs. Judge Short and two other ladies to call at Mohair on an afternoon when Mr. Cooke was trying a trotter on the track. The three returned wondering and charmed with Mrs. Cooke; they were sure she had had no hand in the furnishing of that atrocious house.

   • 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 23, in The Mirror and the Lamp:

     If the afternoon was fine they strolled together in the park, very slowly, and with pauses to draw breath wherever the ground sloped upward. The slightest effort made the patient cough. He would stand leaning on a stick and holding a hand to his side, and when the paroxysm had passed it left him shaking.

   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 3, in The China Governess‎:

     Here the stripped panelling was warmly gold and the pictures, mostly of the English school, were mellow and gentle in the afternoon light.

   • 1966, The Kinks, "Sunny Afternoon":

     And I love to live so pleasantly/Live this life of luxury/Lazing on a sunny afternoon/In the summertime

2. (figuratively) The later part of anything, often with implications of decline.
   • 1597, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of King Richard the third, Act III, Scene vii, Lines 173 ff.:

     Buck. ...These both put by a poore petitioner
     A care-crazd mother of a many children,
     A beauty-waining and distressed widow,
     Euen in the afternoone of her best daies
     Made prise and purchase of his lustfull eye,
     Seduc’t the pitch and height of al his thoughts,
     To base declension and loathd bigamie,
     By her in his vnlawfull bed he got.

3. (informal) A party or social event held in the afternoon.

• arvo (Australian); aft (dated slang); undern (UK dialect)

• aft
• afternoonish
• afternoon tea
• arvo
• good afternoon

• forenoon

• (times of day) time of day; dawn, morning, noon/midday, afternoon, dusk, evening, night, midnight ^{(Category: en:Times of day)}

afternoon (not comparable)

1. (more often in the plural) In the afternoon.

afternoon

1. Clipping of good afternoon.

• afternoon at OneLook Dictionary Search
• "afternoon, n., adv., and int.", in the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press.