wee hours of the ....

[Jonathan Lighter]

Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
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

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