eve

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The evening or day preceding a special day, such as a holiday.
• noun The period immediately preceding a certain event.
• noun Evening.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To become damp.
• noun A hen-roost.
• noun The close of the day; the evening.
• noun The night or evening (often, and specifically in the Roman Catholic Church, the day and night) before certain holy days of the church, marked more or less generally by religious and popular observances.
• noun The period just preceding some specific event; a space of time proximate to the occurrence of something: as, the eve of a battle; on the eve of a revolution.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun Poetic Evening.
• noun The evening before a holiday, -- from the Jewish mode of reckoning the day as beginning at sunset, not at midnight; ; also, the period immediately preceding some important event.
• noun (Zoöl) the European goatsucker or nightjar; -- called also night churr, and churr owl.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun The day or night before, usually used for holidays, such as Christmas Eve.
• noun Evening, night.
• verb To come before something, usually used for holidays, such as Christmas Eve.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun the period immediately before something
• noun the day before
• noun (Old Testament) Adam's wife in Judeo-Christian mythology: the first woman and mother of the human race; God created Eve from Adam's rib and placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden
• noun the latter part of the day (the period of decreasing daylight from late afternoon until nightfall)