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YESTREEN (n. pl. -S)
Definition(s):
- (n.) yesterday evening; the night before
Useful information for game players:
- Front hooks: (none)
- Back hooks: -S
- Anagrams: (none)
- Longer extensions: (none)
- Wraparounds: (none)
- Other Spellings: (none)
- Related Forms: YESTEREVE, YESTERNIGHT
Epilogue:
It is easy to see how the Middle English yisterday even (“yesterday evening”) morphed into yistreven and eventually the modern YESTREEN or YESTEREVE. A similar alteration happened with Halloween, which started out as All-Hallow-Even.
YESTREEN is a good old word for a common concept, having been in the language for over 600 years, and it still sees occasional use. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for the fascinating old word yesterfang, “that which was taken or caught on the previous day or former occasion” — as in a yesterfang of fish.
One might also wish that the word nudiustertian, which means “on or pertaining to the day before yesterday” (from Latin nudiustertianus, “today the third day”) had not become obsolete, but it is, admittedly, a mouthful and a bit contrived. However, I would like to call for a full revival of overmorrow, a useful and straightforward word meaning “the day after tomorrow.” It was employed in the Coverdale Bible translation of 1535 (“Up Sara, let us make oure prayer unto God to daye, tomorrow, and overmorrow,” Tobit 8:4), and it has cognates in other languages (German ubermorgen, etc.), but it never caught on widely.
Regardless, we will conclude our examination of words starting with the letter Y overmorrow.
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