بعدازظهر

What it means

بعدازظهر (bad-az-zohr) means afternoon, the period from midday until evening. The expression is a frozen compound of three elements: بعد (ba’d, after) from Arabic بَعْد, از (az, from), a native Persian preposition, and ظهر (zohr, noon) from Arabic ظُهر. Together they mean literally “after noon.” In spoken Persian the word is often run together as a single unit: bad-az-zohr. The opposite is قبل از ظهر (ghabl az zohr, before noon, i.e. morning), though صبح (sobh) is more commonly used for morning in everyday speech. بعدازظهر refers loosely to the time from roughly noon to early evening, before شب (shab, night) or غروب (ghorub, dusk) sets in.

How to use it

• بعدازظهر امروز می‌ری بیرون؟ (bad-az-zohr-e emruz miri birun?) “Are you going out this afternoon?”
• بعدازظهر می‌بینمت (bad-az-zohr mibinamet) “I’ll see you in the afternoon.”
• بعدازظهرا معمولاً خوابم می‌گیره (bad-az-zohrâ ma’mulan khâbam migire) “I usually get sleepy in the afternoons.”
• جلسه بعدازظهره (jalase bad-az-zohre) “The meeting is in the afternoon.”

Cultural note

The بعدازظهر holds a particular rhythm in Iranian daily life. Shops, offices, and government buildings traditionally close for a midday break from around 1 to 4 pm, meaning the early بعدازظهر is a quiet period when streets empty and families return home to eat ناهار (nâhâr, lunch) and rest. This tradition is stronger in smaller cities and towns than in Tehran, where modern work schedules have compressed it. The phrase «بعدازظهر بیا» (come in the afternoon) assumes this quiet domestic window rather than the busier morning hours.

References

• Dehkhoda
• Vajehyab