Notes:

• The word “this” frequently precedes “evening” as in “I’ll see you this evening.” Notice how the vowel in “this” is reduced to the schwa /ə/ and the consonant /s/ is linked into the word “evening,” making the phrase sound like “the sevening.” . The same is true for “this morning” (the smorning) and “this afternoon” (the safternoon).
• This word is a homograph with the word “evening,” which is pronounced as three syllables [i və nɪŋ] and is the present participle of the verb “even” (to equalize) as in “Their team tried to even the score” or “They were evening the score when the referee stopped the game.”