This is something that I don't understand because I was never taught the correct way.

Now and then when I'm out walking in the street and I pass someone else, like a dog walker for example a short but polite passing greeting is exchanged.

"Morning." one of us would say. For the other to respond with "Morning" in return. Or "Evening" or "Afternoon" depending on the time of day.

Basically I've only heard "Morning" spoke at anytime up to 11:30am.

However, as soon as it turn 12pm midday then it becomes "Evening" or "Afternoon".

Is there a difference between "Evening" and "Afternoon" or are they interchangeable?

UPDATE: I've been going through the replies and noticed the general concensus is that afternoon is between 12pm and 5pm with evening being between 5pm and 9pm. Not to mention the consensus that people don't like people for not knowing this.

My wife just got corrected after sending an email stating that the activity was Wednesday night and started at 4:00 pm, and she was corrected by someone that it wasn’t night.

What’s the consensus on what part of the day you would refer to when discussing an activity from 4:00-5:00 pm?

As the title says. My daughter and I were having a conversation earlier, and she asked me to order something from Amazon; I was busy so I told her “please remind me this afternoon”. She responded by telling me it is already afternoon (it was 12:10pm). So this made me start to think about times of day and if there is a standard, so I googled it and that was useless because it was kind of all over the place or not specific enough… no real standard definition that I could find.

I would like to preface this by saying this is how I personally reference the different “time periods” throughout the day, it has nothing to do with any proper definitions or scientific research, this is just how I, myself, will reference the different time periods throughout the day :)

So I’m thinking maybe everyone kinda has their own personal “range” they use for specific times of the day? Anyway, I thought it would be fun to see what hours everyone else uses/considers to be morning/noon/afternoon/evening/night/early morning etc or whatever … so here’s mine:

Ok, so to me… (and this is just how I personally define the times of day, when I’m speaking about morning/noon/night etc) goes kind of like this:

morning is like 5am-12pm noon, noon is like 11am-1pm, afternoon is anytime between 1-5pm, evening is between 5-9pm, nighttime is after 9pm til like 2am, then it’s early morning from like 2-5am. So, for example, if it’s like 11am, and I ask my daughter “will you please remind me this afternoon”, I usually mean sometime between 1-3pm, but if I say “will you please remind me later this afternoon” that usually means anytime between 3-5ish pm.

am I psycho? Or does everyone have like a set period of time (in hours) that they kind of use to describe the times of day?

TLDR: What hours of the day do you consider when referencing the different time periods throughout a 24 hour period? For example: Morning/Noon/Afternoon/Evening/Night/Late Night/Early Morning

And does it change throughout the year?

I know you say ‘good afternoon’ when it’s 3pm, but what time does that change to ‘good evening’?