It’s the shank of the evening! But when is that, exactly? This phrase is typically suggests that the night is far from over, shank being an old word for something straight, or the tail end of something. But as the Dictionary of American Regional English notes, in the South, evening is considered “the time between late afternoon and dusk.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Shank of the Evening Expression”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Yes, hello. My name is Linda Fernandez. I’m calling from Avon, Indiana.
And I had a question about an expression that my grandmother used to use.
It was called the shank of the evening.
And my recollection is that if you happen to be at a party and it was starting to get late, then somebody might say, oh, it’s getting late.
And she would say, no, it’s just the shank of the evening.
Now, in terms of her background, she was French-Canadian background, born in Houghton, Michigan, in the Upper Peninsula, and then moved to Toledo, Ohio, when she was about three years old, and she was born in 1896.
Okay, wow. And do you use this yourself?
Occasionally.
So, the story that you told makes me think that it means still the early part of the evening. The evening’s not yet over. So, the shank is just the first part of the evening.
Right. That’s what I think.
Okay. Very good.
Yeah. So don’t leave yet, right?
Right, yeah.
It’s just the shank of the evening.
Very interesting.
Yeah.
This is colorful. Is she a horsey type of person?
Was she what?
Was she a horsey type of person, like involved in the horses or racing or riding or equestrian events?
Okay.
Nope.
Okay.
Shank of the evening, Martha.
Shank of the evening.
Did you use that in Louisville growing up?
I think I did, or I heard it in old movies. I think of sitting on the veranda, you know?
Well, I know it was in a couple of plays.
Like, I think Henry Miller used it in a play.
Okay.
Yeah, the word shank originally had to do with the lower part of the leg.
It had to do with things that were long and straight.
And we get the same shank in a prison, right?
Oh, I see.
Something long and thin that you stabbed somebody with.
Yeah.
And then I think it took on the idea of sort of the end of something, the tail end of something.
I associate this expression with the South for some reason.
And I think of the evening in the South being from noon to twilight.
So the shank of the evening would be the tail end of the evening, that is the tail end of the afternoon.
This is really interesting, Linda, because this is a difference that most Americans aren’t aware of.
According to the Dictionary of American Regional English, and they have a beautiful map for it, in the American South, the evening tends to be from early afternoon until dusk.
Whereas in most of the rest of the country, and North America for that matter, evening is from about dusk until bedtime.
And it’s two very different ideas of what evening means.
But so why did your grandmother say this?
Was she influenced by Southerners at all?
No, I don’t think so.
Not at all, because she was a Northerner.
She was from UP, Michigan.
I’ve seen shank of the evening used both to mean at the beginning of the evening and the end of the evening.
The nighttime, I should say.
But your story was perfect, Linda, because the evidence that I’m looking at shows that it’s almost always counterfactual.
That is to say, person A says it’s time to go, it’s getting late, and person B says no, it’s still the shank of the evening.
So regardless of what they think evening is, they still mean it’s not yet time to go.
And there’s still more to do, and we can stick around and have some fun.
So that’s cool. I love this. I love this very much.
Shank of the evening.
Well, thank you, because I remember using it once in college many years ago, and people, they had never heard of it.
Oh, really?
They just need to read more.
Where was that?
Oh, it was in Ohio, in central Ohio.
And it was like the 60s, early 70s.
Interesting.
Yeah, it’s a very poetic expression.
The English dialect dictionary has usages of this from the 1830s from Sheffields in England.
So this has got a great long history that goes back to the old world.
Great.
Cool.
Thanks, Linda.
Okay, thank you.
Thanks for calling.
Glad to hear from you.
Thanks for listening.
Bye-bye.
Take care.
Bye, Linda.
I love that expression.
Shank of the evening.
Verandas and lemonade.
Yeah, that’s what I, well, in the middle of…
Catherine Hepburn.
Yeah, it’s at the time of the day when you switch from iced tea to bourbon.
There’s a time of the day when you switch to that?
I don’t know.
I’m just suggesting other people.
We should also remember Hoagy Carmichael’s great song from the 50’s “In the Cool Cool Cool of the Evening”. It contains the lyric:
In the shank of the night,
when the doins’ are right,
well you can tell ’em I’ll be there.
when I lived in eastern Kentucky in the early 80’s, an old man I knew referred that time as “owl light”.
When I lived in Eastern Kentucky back in the early 80’s, I knew an old man who referred to this time period as “owl light”. He also had a couple of other archaic sayings. One he used was not so old–“I courted her” but the most delightful one was “I couldn’t look her in the countenance” meaning he was embarrassed by something in front of a woman.
The man also had a couple of other archaic sayings. One he used was not so old–“I courted her” but the most delightful one was “I couldn’t look her in the countenance” meaning he was embarrassed by something in front of a woman.