"Pre"snickety

I watched a little of the TV show “Big Bang Theory” last night because I like to hear one of the main characters, Sheldon, talk. He is some kind of an astrophysicist and he lives with an equally brilliant roommate and there is a dumb neighbor across the hall. That’s the premise of the show. Two other ultranerds who are always in the apartment set up Sheldon with a date and said you are meeting her at 4:30 in the evening. He said he refers to 4:30 as the “prevening.” He said he doesn’t feel 4:30 p.m. is evening and he wants that word to catch on. I guess as a scientist, he likes to be “pre”cise. Well, 4:30 is the afternoon, but it could get by with being prevening as it is the precursor to 5 p.m. which is definitely the evening. So we’ll see if prevening catches on as in “It’s 4 o’clock in the prevening somewhere, (we might as well have happy hour).”