Overnight

Something happens 'overnight' if it happens fast (or faster than expected)

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“Overnight” is often used as a shortcut to mean, “too fast” or “faster than something should happen” or “faster than something normally happens.” Literally, the word means starting at night and done by the morning. So if you ship something overnight, it will arrive in the morning.

But metaphorically, it means “fast” or “faster than normal.” It’s most often used to lower a person’s expectations about how fast something will happen. For example, if someone wants to lose 25 pounds before next month, you can say: “It’s not healthy to lose 25 pounds overnight.” When saying that, you don’t literally mean “during the night,” but instead you mean: “It’s not healthy to lose 25 pounds in an unreasonably short amount of time.”

When CFCs were banned by the Montreal Protocol, products containing CFCs didn’t disappear overnight. That means, they didn’t disappear in a short period of time. Instead, some products had a long life and continued to emit CFCs even after the Montreal Protocol was signed.

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