What it means
پریشب (prishab) means “the night before last.” It is a compound of پری (pari), a colloquial time prefix meaning “the one before” or “the earlier,” and شب (shab), meaning “night.” The same prefix appears in پریروز (pariuz), meaning “the day before yesterday.” Where دیشب (dishab) means “last night” and شب قبل (shab-e ghabl) means “the night before” in a general relative sense, پریشب specifically names the night two nights ago. The word is pure Persian and belongs to everyday colloquial speech. It is especially common in storytelling and recounting recent events when the speaker needs to be precise about which night something happened without giving a full date.
How to use it
- پریشب دیدمش (prishab didamesh) “I saw him the night before last.”
- پریشب چی خوردی؟ (prishab chi khordi?) “What did you eat the night before last?”
- پریشب خوابم نبرد (prishab khâbam nabord) “I couldn’t sleep the night before last.”
- پریشب یه خواب عجیب دیدم (prishab ye khâb-e ajib didam) “The night before last I had a strange dream.”
Cultural note
Persian has a compact and precise set of time adverbs anchored to the present: امشب (emshab, tonight), دیشب (dishab, last night), and پریشب (prishab, the night before last) form a natural sequence. This specificity reflects a broader feature of Persian time vocabulary, which tends to use single words where English reaches for phrases. The parallel day series امروز (emruz, today), دیروز (diruz, yesterday), and پریروز (pariuz, the day before yesterday) works in the same way.
References
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