# eve

Pronunciation: say "EEV" /iːv/

## Noun

1. The day or night before a particular day or event, usually a holiday, as in Christmas Eve.
   - Simple: The day or night before a certain day, most often a holiday like Christmas.
   - _Crowds packed the square on New Year's Eve to watch the fireworks at midnight._
   - _The groom barely slept on the eve of the wedding, going over his speech until dawn._
2. The period just before something happens or is introduced, when it is close at hand.
   - Simple: The time just before something happens or begins.
   - _The researchers believed they stood on the eve of a breakthrough in battery design._
   - _Analysts say the auto industry is on the eve of a major shift to electric cars._

## Noun

3. Evening or night: the close of the day and the dark hours after it. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: The evening or the night.
   - _Couples strolled along the harbor wall on a mild summer's eve._
   - _The lamps in the village were lit one by one as eve settled over the valley._

## Origin

From a variant of the Middle English noun even (from Old English ǣfen), which lost its final -n before 1200 because the -n was mistaken for a grammatical ending; the archaic or poetic even (“evening”) comes from the same source. In medieval Europe a day was counted from sunset to sunset, so the night before a holiday belonged to that holiday, hence its “eve”.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/eve (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).