wee hours of the ....

[Baker, John]

        I'd say that the standard phrase is just "wee hours," which gets
3,740,000 hits.  So it could plausibly be combined with either "of the
night" or "of the morning."

        "Whee hours" gets 2000 hits.  I assume that's a deliberate play
on words in every or almost every case.


John Baker



-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Laurence Horn
Sent: Monday, August 28, 2006 12:03 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: wee hours of the ....

At 11:25 AM -0400 8/28/06, Barnhart wrote:
>Seen on another list:
>
>....proposals that aren't madly cobbled together in wee hours of the
>night, etc. ....
>
>I would expect "wee hours of the morning".
>
It doesn't seem that unheard-of to me.  The raw google numbers (provided
with the usual modicum of salt) are:

"wee hours of the morning"   1,100,000
"wee hours of the night"           152,000
"wee hours of the afternoon"        4,950

The last one I'm pretty sure I haven't encountered, but it's
understandable in context.

LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org