noon
pronunciation
How to pronounce noon in British English:
UK [nuːn]
How to pronounce noon in American English:
US [nuːn]
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- Noun:
- the middle of the day
Word Origin
- noon
- noon: [OE] Noon denotes etymologically the ‘ninth’ hour. It was adopted in the Old English period from Latin nōna, short for nōna hōra, the ‘ninth hour’. Reckoning the day from sunrise, on average six o’clock, this meant that ‘noon’ was three o’clock in the afternoon (which was originally when the office of nones [18] – a related word – was said in the Roman catholic church).By the 12th century, however, we find noon being used for a ‘midday meal’, and in the early 13th century it had moved on to simply ‘midday’, so it appears that some forward shifting of a meal that had originally taken place in mid afternoon was responsible for altering the meaning of noon (modern English terms for mealtimes, such as tea and dinner, are equally slippery).=> nine
- noon (n.)
- mid-12c., non "midday, 12 o'clock p.m., midday meal," from Old English non "3 o'clock p.m., the ninth hour," also "the canonical hour of nones," from Latin nona hora "ninth hour" of daylight, by Roman reckoning about 3 p.m., from nona, fem. singular of nonus "ninth" (see nones). Sense shift from "3 p.m." to "12 p.m." began during 12c., when time of Church prayers shifted from ninth hour to sixth hour, or perhaps because the customary time of the midday meal shifted, or both. The shift was complete by 14c. (same evolution in Dutch noen).
Antonym
Example
- 1. At about noon I start gazing around for suspects .
- 2. A second explosion , about noon local time monday , destroyed an outer building at another of the plant 's reactors .
- 3. Even at noon , we had to drive with our headlights on .
- 4. At noon on sunday , blackened shells of buildings were still smoldering .
- 5. By noon her water had broken .