the.com/late night

means The hours well after dark and toward the small hours of the morning, often associated with being awake when most people are asleep.

from Both halves are old, plain English. "Late" descends from Old English "læt," meaning slow or tardy — a cousin of the German "lass" and related to the idea of letting things slip. "Night" comes from Old English "niht," part of a vast family of night-words across Europe (Latin "nox," Greek "nyx," German "Nacht"), all tracing back to a shared ancient root for darkness. Pairing them to mean "the deep, undue hours" is the kind of obvious compound speakers built and rebuilt for centuries; "late-night" as a fixed phrase — especially the television flavor — is a much more recent, 20th-century habit.