small hours
4
4.9
- noun
:
horas pequeñas
- Quite often I find her up, wandering her big and empty house in the small hours, leaving lights on wherever she goes.
- small hours of the morning
- small hours of the night
- wee small hours
Examples
-
Arnold agonized through the small hours of the morning.
Fiction book (2000) -
In the small hours afterwards, Otis sat by the window smoking and watching the sky lighten.
Fiction book (1990) -
And working until the small hours of the morning.
-
Night visitors: they come in the small hours.
Fiction book (1993) -
The play prompted conversation into the small hours of the next day.
Blog text (29) -
I understand Peggy will be out at a ball, which means she won't be home until the small hours of the morning.
Fiction book (1994) -
"But I rather suspect that in the small hours of the morning he fantasizes he were anywhere but 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."
Blog text (7) -
Before I became a father, I could regularly be found scurrying through Soho in the small hours, rushing between comedy gigs.
Blog text (5) -
Freddie was awakened in the small hours of the morning by a voice in his pillow.
-
But it was the small hours of the morning, and there were hardly any cars on the road.
Synonyms
1
3.7
The late part of the night when most people are asleep
Antonyms
How Late
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'the early hours after midnight' is not directly derivable from 'small' (limited in size) + 'hours' (sixty-minute periods); 'small' here is an idiomatic/archaic modifier and the phrase as a whole has a conventionalized meaning. A B1 learner who knows the constituent words but hasn't seen the expression would unlikely predict this sense, so the expression functions as opaque.
Etymology
Small hours may come from old speech where the last hours of the night were called small because they felt short, quiet, and less important. So small hours means the very early time after midnight and before dawn, when most people are asleep.