Afternoon

Afternoon is the period between noon and evening. The term lacks a precise definition because it was in use long before accurate time-pieces became widespread. Hence, words and phrases that refer to general periods in the day were more practical.

Famous quotes containing the word afternoon:

“Then suddenly the noon turns afternoon
And afternoon like an ill-written page
Will fade, until the very stain of light
Gathers in all the venom of the night
The equilibrium of the thirtieth age.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)

“We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)

“The afternoon is visibly a source,
Too wide, too irised, to be more than calm,
Too much like thinking to be less than thought,
Obscurest parent, obscurest patriarch,
A daily majesty of meditation,
That comes and goes in silences of its own.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)