(sometimes initial capital letter) the evening or the day before a holiday, church festival, or any date or event.
Christmas Eve; the eve of an execution.
the period preceding or leading up to any event, crisis, etc..
on the eve of the American Revolution.
the evening.
(in the Bible) the name of the first woman: wife of Adam and progenitor of the human race.
a female given name: from a Hebrew word meaning “life.”
the evening or day before some special event or festival
( capital when part of a name )
New Year's Eve
the period immediately before an event
on the eve of civil war
an archaic word for evening
1200–50; Middle English; variant of even 2
An eve is the day — or night — just before some event. You might call the day before your birthday your "birthday eve." Some holidays are well-known for having the proceeding days distinguished as eves: many of us celebrate New Year's Eve, others gather for meals on Christmas Eve or Passover Eve, and the word "Halloween" comes from "All Hallow's Eve." The word eve is sometimes also a shortened form of evening, the last part of the day: "It stays light so late on a summer's eve."
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I assume you didn’t wait to start thinking about it until the eve of your 70th.
From MarketWatch • May 8, 2026
Sarah “Sally” Snyder, a young, struggling actress, was found dead in a New York City apartment on the eve of her 22nd birthday, about two weeks before Christmas 1973.
From Slate • May 5, 2026
Activating the blocking rules and humiliating Meta on the eve of that meeting reflects a leader who assumes his counterpart will arrive anyway—and pay for the privilege.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 5, 2026
He described it as "a state visit for the ages, the most significant since his grandfather George VI's visit in 1939 on the eve of the Second World War".
From BBC • Apr. 29, 2026
How could they have let the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival slip by without realizing it?
From "In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson" by Bette Bao Lord
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
