Of an Evening

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

Susan.

Susan from Roanoke, Virginia.

Susan from Roanoke.

Hi, Susan.

How can we help?

Well, I have had a question that has occurred to me in the recent months. There’s an expression that I’ve heard here in Southwest Virginia since I was young. I grew up here. It’s a little phrase that’s used when people are referring to a time in the past. And what they will say is that they saw their mother of an evening. And this of an evening or of a morning, I’ve never really been able to tell if people were shortening of thee or whether it was really just a way of saying other. And it’s an expression that I’ve really just heard in this part of Virginia. I’ve lived in other places in the South, and I’ve not heard it. So I’ve wondered if it is an antiquated term. Maybe it has some relationship to something in the past, since this is an Appalachian region of Virginia. So I’ve just gotten curious.

That’s a good question. Would you be surprised if I told you it goes back hundreds of years?

Yes.

You would be?

Okay. Let me clarify something here, though. When we’re talking of an evening, it’s not that your mother did it once. It’s that she used to do it often, right?

Well, it’s usually just to talk about a specific incident in the past. And the person will be, you know, not far away past, but more recent past. You know, they did something outside, mowed the grass of an evening, or they saw their relative of a morning.

Susan, that’s interesting because my mother’s family comes from the Shenandoah Valley right there, and they used to say this when it was something continuous, like she used to like to have her coffee on the veranda of a morning. So every morning she liked to do it.

I’ve heard it that way, too. I have heard it as a habitual practice. That’s typically what we find. It almost always means it’s something that you like to do or that you tend to do or you have a habit of doing. And we can find it as far back as the 1600s in the diary of Samuel Pepys. We can find it in the writing of Thackeray and Browning and Eliot and a bunch more of just these famous authors. And it’s spread throughout the United States. We’ll find it in the American South. And in the South Midlands, that is, say, roughly the Ohio River Valley down to what we would call the true South.

And it’s not just of an evening. You can say of a morning, as Martha said. You can say of a Sunday. Of a Sunday, I like to sit and read the newspaper. Or you can say of a Friday, our habit is to watch a movie together on the couch.

Well, that’s so interesting. And is it, I mean, if you see it written out, how would you spell it?

Oh, it’s just O-F, the preposition, A, the letter A, the article. And then whatever designation of time. So it’ll be a day of the week, or it’ll indicate a time of day. So morning, evening, the day of the week. You could probably get away with saying of a December. We like to go all out and put up the Christmas celebrations and really celebrate the holiday.

Okay. Well, that is very, very interesting.

Yeah, so widespread. I’m not surprised to find it in your speech, Susan, given where you’re from.

Not at all. It’s a good marker of somebody from the South.

Well, that’s good to know. Thanks for calling. We really appreciate it.

Well, thank you so much.

All right. Take care now.

Bye, Susan.

Thank you. You too. Bye-bye.

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