tonight

[Laurence Horn]

I first noticed this use in the context of reports or comments about
National Basketball Association games, where the preponderance of night
games has always been much more absolute than in baseball.  I agree that it
is spreading to baseball, but it's still more frequent in basketball uses.
I wonder if you ever get the reverse effect in football:  "We didn't block
or tackle today" (after a mediocre Monday Night Football effort).  Of
course it would be hard to tell if that would count as spreading or just
the broad use of "today" for the full 24-hour period.

larry

>At 12:15 PM -0500 7/4/2000, Greg Pulliam wrote, ostensibly about tonight:
>
>>I have noticed over the past few years a tendency for baseball
>>announcers to refer to afternoons as "tonight."  As in today's,
>>"We'll see if (David) Cone is the Cone of old tonight," referring to
>>a 1:00 p.m. EDT start on ESPN.  Is this just a case of announcer
>>misspeak, or is this a semantic shift that's available only in this
>>venue?
>>
>Disgusting though it is, evening is obviously the unmarked time for a
>baseball game. I watch a lot of baseball and have noticed the same
>usage, and I believe I've also heard it from players in post-game
>interviews (as in "I didn't have my good stuff tonight"). I think
>I've also heard back-tracking corrections (e.g., "starting
>tonight--er, this afternoon will be..."). It occurs to me to wonder
>whether this usage extends to Patriots Day in Boston, when games
>traditionally start in the morning.
>--