afternoon

A Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat . 1884/86

The afternoon is the time of day between noon and evening .

In ancient times the afternoon was the third quarter of a day of light ; When the day was divided into twelve temporal hours and four day segments, the afternoon comprised the period from midday to the end of the ninth hour of the day. The Middle Ages adopted the ancient division of days in Christian prayer times: the afternoon prayer was the Non . The ancient organization of the day lost its importance after the unchangeable hours of everyday life in the late Middle Ages .

The high German compound "afternoon" used today was still rare in the 15th century; In the older stages of development of the German language, the spelling out prevailed (e.g. "after midday"). In contrast to the morning, there are a number of other names for the afternoon in the German dialect , which are often derived from the snack between meals: Vespers , snacks , coffee or tea or the Tyrolean Marende are examples. There are also areas in the German-speaking area that hardly know the afternoon and instead extend midday into the evening, or, conversely, allow midday to be followed by evening.

In most European languages ​​there is an "afternoon" in the same etymological formation as in German: engl. afternoon , French après-midi , although only a few languages have a morning as a counterpart . In some European languages, the afternoon is immediately followed by the evening, while in Japanese , for example , a separate time of day called Yūgata (Japanese 夕 方) is inserted.

In English there is a special greeting for the afternoon with “Good afternoon!” , While the neutral form “Good day!” Has become unusual. The Spanish greeting “Buenas tardes”, like the Italian “Buona sera (ta)”, can be used from late afternoon into the evening.

The afternoon is a theme in literature, art and music, from L'Après-midi d'un faune (“A Faun's Afternoon”) Mallarmé (set to music by Debussy , ballet by Nijinsky ) to Hemingway's death in the afternoon . In 1957, Billy Wilder's popular film was called Ariane - Love in the Afternoon .

Web links

Commons : afternoon  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Wiktionary: Afternoon  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfgang Trapp : Small manual of the dimensions, numbers, weights and the time calculation . Philipp Reclam, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-89836-198-5 , p. 53.
2. ↑ Dietmar Wünschmann: The times of day. Your name in German. NG Elwert Verlag Marburg, 1966, p. 17 ff.
3. ↑ Dietmar Wünschmann: The times of day. Your name in German. NG Elwert Verlag Marburg, 1966.