Abstract
The term yoru-gohan, meaning supper, is a new word used mainly by today's youth. But its formation goes back to at least the time of World War II. Although this word is hard to trace in documents because it was an unpolished expression used by children, recently it has come to properly express changes in eating habits, such as the delay of supper time and the lack of breakfast. Yoru-gohan is now used in newspaper articles, remarks in the Diet, elementary school teaching materials, and can be counted as a Kizukanai Shin-go("unnoticed new word"). Yoru-gohan derives from yoru 'night' to express supper time. Hiru 'afternoon' was added to the basic formation for asa 'morning' and yu 'evening' meals. Yoru is in contrast to hiru. Yoru-gohan is a new phenomenon not only in yoru being used as meal vocabulary, but also because yoru is used as the first half of a compound word. Therefore, yoru-gohan is a notable word from the viewpoint of the historical study of vocabulary and word structure.
