evening dress

evening dress (countable and uncountable, plural evening dresses)

1. (countable) An elegant dress worn by women, especially for social events in the evening, an evening gown.
2. (uncountable) formal attire worn for evening social events.
   • 1914, Louis Joseph Vance, chapter III, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915, OCLC 40817384:

     She was frankly disappointed. For some reason she had thought to discover a burglar of one or another accepted type—either a dashing cracksman in full-blown evening dress, lithe, polished, pantherish, or a common yegg, a red-eyed, unshaven burly brute in the rags and tatters of a tramp.

• evening gown