Cabbage Night

English

Etymology

• Perhaps from the use of rotten cabbages in pranks on this night.
• Perhaps because some towns used to pile all the left-over cabbage from the fields and light a bonfire on the night before Halloween.

Proper noun

Cabbage Night (plural Cabbage Nights)

1. (around New York City, Northern New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and especially upstate New York and Vermont) A particular night, commonly the night of the 30th to the 31st of October, during which young people play pranks and do mischief in their neighborhoods.

Synonyms

• see list in Mischief Night

References

• The Dialect Survey