student asking question

Why was the proposition "in" used before "morning" and "at" used before "night"?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

Good question. The short answer is that prepositions in English are very idiomatic, so often the nouns that they are used in front of may seem random or won't make sense. The preposition "in" is used before morning because "in" is always used in front of "morning", "afternoon", and "evening". Ex: I'm going to see her in the morning. Ex: We're having lunch together in the afternoon. The noun "night", however, normally takes the preposition "at". In this case, there isn't really a rule for using prepositions here, and you usually just have to memorize them. Ex: Nocturnal animals are active at night.

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