middle day

English

Alternative forms

• middle-day, middleday

Etymology

From middle +‎ day. Cognate with Old High German mittiltag (“noon, midday”). Compare also similarly formed Middle English middelniȝt, middel-niht (“midnight”, literally “middle-night”).

Noun

middle day (uncountable)

1. Midday; noon.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:midday

   • 1895, Alfred Tennyson Baron Tennyson, William James Rolfe, Select Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson, page 168:

     Till each like a golden image was pollen'd from head to feet,
     And each was as dry as a cricket, with thirst in the middleday heat.

   • 1921, Anatole France, translated by J. Lewis May, Marguerite‎^[1]:

     [...] a law, in short, is all the hundred and one things, the hundred and one tasks you have to fulfil at all hours, the grey and gentle hours of the morning, the white hours of middle day, the purple hours of evening, the silent, meditative hours of night; tasks which leave you no soul to call your own and rob you of the consciousness of your own identity.

   • 1930, W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale:

     The cold roast beef is frozen and comes from Australia and was over-cooked at middle day; and the burgundy - ah, why will they call it burgundy? Have they never been to Beaune and stayed at Hotel de la Poste?