عِشَاءٌ

[The time of nightfall; i. e.] the first, or beginning, of the darkness (Msb, K) of night: (Msb:) [this is the sense in which it is generally used, and always when it is used as applied to one of the five times of the divinely-appointed acts of prayer; صَلَاةُ العِشَاءِ, and elliptically العِشَاءُ alone, meaning the prayer of nightfall:] or it is [the time] when the sun has disappeared: (Az, TA:) or [the time] from sunset (K) [i. e.] from the prayer of sunset (Msb, TA) to the عَتَمَة [or darkness after nightfall]; (Msb, K, TA;) [and this is what is meant by its being said that it is] synonym with عَشِىٌّ: (S:) or [the time] from the زَوَال [meaning the declining of the sun from the meridian] to the rising of the dawn: (S, K:) so some assert, and they cite, as an example,

غَدَوْنَا غُدْوَةً سَحَرًا بِلَيْلٍ

عِشَاءً بَعْدَ مَا انْتَصَفَ النَّهَارُ

[We went early in the morning, a little before daybreak, in a period between the declining of the sun from the meridian and the rising of the dawn, after the daytime had become halved]: (S, TA:) [sometimes] the Arabs said, أَقْبَلَتِ العِشَاءُ, meaning العَشِيَّةُ; and هٰذَا العَشِيَّةُ, meaning العِشَاءُ. (Msb voce صَوْتٌ.) العِشَاانِ means The time of sunset and the عَتَمَة [or darkness after nightfall]: (IF, S, Msb, K: [compare הָעַרְבַּיִם in Exodus xii. 6 and xvi. 12:]) this is according to the saying that the عِشَاء is from the prayer of sunset to the عَتَمَة. (TA.)