It comes in the dead of night!
I am reading a text about Easter and it appears the following sentence:
The bunny is never seen because it comes in the dead of night!.
What is it supposed to be "the dead of night"?.
Thank you.
5 Answers
en plena noche o las altas horas (de la madrugada/noche)
I didn't know where I had to look it up. I didn't find it in my dictionary
The expression, "in the dead of night," is a somewhat hackneyed expression that was originally used metaphorically to compare the stillness and silence of the darkest part of night with the silence and darkness of death. It has been around for some time, at least as far back the late 16th century, as evidenced by the following passage:
From Shakespeare's "Henry IV"
The whiteness in thy cheek
Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand.
Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,
Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night,
And would have told him half his Troy was burnt.
It refers to the time of night when nothing is happening and no one is around (everyone's sleeping). I've seen it most often used to point out unusual nighttime activity. For example:
"They escaped from prison in the dead of night."
We have this in the phrasebook, In the dead of night.
Muy entrada la noche
Given the answers in this thread, I wonder if the phrase in the phrasebook needs an update... ?
'Muy entrada la noche'...I think that although this means very late at night, it also implies in the dead of night. Maybe not as strongly as it could though....so, yes. It may need an update.
