Word.ws English Dictionary

top of the morning

top of the morning phrase: a generic, cheerful greeting said to someone in the morning.

top of the morning: a generic, cheerful greeting said to someone in the morning
Image: SatyrTN, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Phrase

top of the morning

  1. (Ireland, New-England, archaic, humorous, idiomatic, sometimes) A generic, cheerful greeting said to someone in the morning.

Origin of top of the morning

A working-class phrase once popular throughout the British Isles, possibly in reference to cream rising in milk. It has been revived into popular consciousness, and is associated with Irishmen, by the film Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959).

Questions about top of the morning

What does top of the morning mean?
Top of the morning means a generic, cheerful greeting said to someone in the morning.
What part of speech is top of the morning?
Top of the morning is a phrase.

Words near top of the morning in the dictionary

  1. top of mind
  2. top of mind awareness
  3. top of one's class
  4. top of the hour
  5. top of the line
  6. top of the morning
  7. top of the shop
  8. top off
  9. top one's boom
  10. top oneself
  11. top order

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: top of the morning (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-top of the morning.ogg.

Cite this entry: “top of the morning.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/top_of_the_morning. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.