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Is there a name for the period between midnight and six in the morning, preferably before sunrise (madrugada)?

Luan316
I'm trying to translate into English the lyrics of a song in Brazilian Portuguese that contains the terms "alvorecer" (dawn) and "madrugada". The latter, although it can also be translated as "dawn", has a different nuance that, from what i've seen, doesn't seem to be expressed in "dawn", and i wouldn't like both to be translated as the same word. "Alvorecer" refers more to the moment when the sun begins to rise, which seems to coincide with "dawn". "Madrugada" carries a connotation more related to the period when it's still dark after midnight, and is often used to refer to when people stay up late around that time, and i don't know if there's a term that poetically fits to translate this word. Obviously i don't want something extremely descriptive like "between midnight and six in the morning", it would be good if it was something like "dawn", but if it doesn't exist, i'll accept the best you can get. I'd like to point out that i'm accepting if there's some formal term not widely used in everyday life that works, especially because the song originally uses some exotic words in our language. The lyrics: "...Esperando o **alvorecer** de novo (Waiting for the dawn again) Esperando o anoitecer pra ver (Waiting for the dusk to see) A clareza da oitava estrela (The clarity of the eighth star) Esperando a **madrugada** vir (Waiting for the \* to come) E eu nĂŁo posso com a mĂŁo rete-la (And i cannot hold it with my hand)..."

33 comments

Appropriate-West2310•
The phrase that comes to mind is 'the small hours \[of the night\]', which can be used as just 'the small hours'.
Mabelhund2013•
"Pre-dawn" is just right before dawn (obviously lol) Ex: I could barely see her in the pre-dawn darkness. "The witching hour" is more poetic, and usually means around 3 or 4am A synonym for dawn could be "daybreak" ie. "Waiting for daybreak again" Or "waiting for the early morning hours" sounds nice too Twilight might be better than dusk for the first line in my opinion (though the book series kind of stole the word from daily use haha) ie. Waiting for twilight to see ...also taking out "the" before dusk sounds more natural to me ("the" is not incorrect, just sounds a little off to me) I feel like we tend to use words like: sunrise, sunset, dawn, dusk, twilight etc. without an article if we're using it as a functional time vs. As a noun. "I went out at sunrise" "They close the park at dusk" "The frogs wake up at dusk" vs. "did you see the sunrise today?"
JenniferJuniper6•
There isn’t a single word. You could say waiting for the dawn to begin, or the early hours.
SagebrushandSeafoam•
Not those very specific boundaries, but approximately 12:00–4:00 is called **the dead of night**, and when daylight appears but the sun has not yet risen is **first light**, **dawn**, or **twilight**. Collectively, those can also be called **the small hours of the night** and **the small hours of the morning**, although that's a lot more idiomatic and some people probably won't be too familiar with those phrases (although they'll be able to infer, if not).
erilaz7•
My dad, who was in the U.S. Navy, uses "o-dark-thirty" to refer to some unspecified time before dawn.
SnooDonuts6494•
Waiting for the witching hour.
reyo7•
For me night starts at 00:00 and ends at 6:00, so my answer is "night". Then 6:00-12:00 is morning, 12:00-18:00 is day, 18:00-00:00 is evening lol.
ebrum2010•
I would just call it the early hours. It's early morning or the wee hours or the small hours but early morning can also mean the early hours after dawn, and the others are kind of colloquial. "Waiting for the early hours" sounds better in a song or poem.
Electric_Tongue•
The perfect word would be overnight
Tchemgrrl•
Pre-dawn or crepuscular.
TheBananaTree34•
Maybe 'Twilight'? In its most general sense, twilight is the period of time before sunrise and after sunset.
Tidweald_of_Bradtoft•
"false dawn" might work ... (a transient light which precedes the rising of the sun by about an hour)
Mysterious_Artist219•
Predawn
eschatological•
I think "witching hour" is probably the most poetic, but that might have a negative feeling behind it. Poetically, I'd go with the "small hours" or "the still of the night" (which refers to the time when everything is quiet and dark and no one is awake anymore) or maybe "the dead of night" which has a similar meaning. Now that I think about it, most of the English phrases describing this time period have connotations with evil or death.
Shadow-Sojourn•
Very early morning, morning while it's still dark, night in the a.m. (that one I can't remember the exact phrase for, so it's definitely a little wrong lol)
MimiKal•
The small hours is the best phrase for this. It refers to around 2-5am. American people here say that it's uncommon and they've heard "wee hours" instead, but "small hours" is common in the UK.
tschwand•
More military saying is Oh Dark Hundred.
zombiegojaejin•
That sounds pretty close to what I would call "the wee hours (of the morning)".
JennyPaints•
The wee houre: 1am to 5am? The dead of night: 12am to 2am? The middle if the night? 12am to 3am? None of the above terms are exact, and other people will define them differently.
Empty_Land_1658•
Probably early morn’ or early morning would be most similarly to what we’d actually use in English for a song.
GypsySnowflake•
I would call it “early morning.”
rawdy-ribosome•
The wee hours of the night
Late_Evening_Grass•
Honestly there is no term in English that corresponds to “madrugada” that is commonly used in any dialect, as far as I know. Assuming based on your post that it is more or less equivalent to the Spanish “madrugada”. Every term related to the pre-dawn period is limited to the time directly preceding dawn, and definitely wouldn’t extend as far back as midnight or even close. I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to come up with an English equivalent of “madrugada” and always come up short. I’d love to be proven wrong, though. I don’t know if this is the case in Portuguese, but in Spanish at least “madrugada” can refer to dawn exactly as it is used in English, that is to say, daybreak or sunrise. “Esperamos la madrugada, cuando comienza la luz.” Or even “la madrugada del día”, although those are definitely the exception rather than the rule.
Standard_Pack_1076•
The wee small hours
Late_Evening_Grass•
Oh, also I would definitely translate anoitecer as nightfall rather than dusk, based on the context. I’d even consider interpreting the first line more figuratively, like waiting for something to begin again. And then madrugada could be dawn, since as you said this song uses uncommon words maybe they are being used in rare but not entirely unheard of senses. But I’m just making a wild guess here, I don’t really even know Portuguese.
feetflatontheground•
'Foreday morning' in Southern Caribbean English
Fit_General_3902•
Waiting for the dark of night to come
mossryder•
That would be "pre-dawn".
SillyNamesAre•
TIL that the name of the Norwegian band "Madrugada" isn't just a name, but actually means something. In retrospect, it should've been obvious, but...
georgia_grace•
You could say the early hours, which tends to be about midnight to 4am. You hear it sometimes in formal contexts where the date on the calendar has changed but you can’t really say it’s the next day - “the robbery occurred sometime on the night of the 27th or the early hours of the 28th” In the context of this song, I would probably translate alvorecer as “daybreak” and madrugada as “dawn.” “Waiting for daybreak” means you’re literally waiting for the sun to rise, while “waiting for dawn” has more of an implication of staying up all night
Dependent-Law7316•
I don’t speak Portugese but I do speak Spanish. I think the issue here is that alvorecer in this context might be better translated as a verb not a noun—the lyric would then be “waiting for the sun to rise again” rather than “waiting for dawn again.” Sunrise (the actual time of the sun coming over the horizon) has a lot of symbolic meaning related to new beginning, and is a pretty specific moment, while dawn is a more nebulous and extended time where the sky is lightening but the sun is not yet visible. So I would translate alvorecer to “sunrise” and madrugada to “dawn”.
Hopeful-Ordinary22•
The depth of night? That seems about the least sinister phrase that doesn't invoke clocks and human reckoning.
Dorianscale•
There isn’t a direct translation, the word also exists in Spanish A few phrases are similar but not exact Graveyard hours/shift would refer to 12-4 You could maybe say bar close time to refer to like 3 am Middle of the night is generally late in the night but not necessarily all the way to 6 Late night is pretty vague but could refer to that time period.