noontide

English

Etymology

From Middle English non-tyde, from Old English nōntīd (“noontide”), equivalent to noon +‎ tide.

Noun

noontide (plural noontides)

1. (literary) Midday, noon.

   Synonyms: meridian, nones, sext; see also Thesaurus:midday

   • 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i], page 16:

     […] I haue bedymn'd / The Noone tide Sun, call'd forth the mutenous windes, / And twixt the greene Sea, and the azur'd vault / Set roaring warre: […]

   • 1885, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, chapter LIII, in John Ormsby, transl., The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha […] In Four Vols, volume II, London: Smith, Elder & Co. […], →OCLC, part I, footnote 1, page 369:

     The favorite noontide mess of the Andalusian peasantry; consisting of cucumbers shred fine, bread-crumbs, oil, vinegar, and water fresh from the spring.

   • 1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 4, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 59:

     Around them all, Negroes carried gunboats of mashed potatoes, spinach, shrimp, zucchini, pot roast, to the long, glittering steam tables, preparing to feed a noontide invasion of Yoyodyne workers.

2. (figuratively) Climax; high point.

   Synonyms: peak, pinnacle, zenith; see also Thesaurus:apex

   • 1879, F. D. Morice, Pindar, chapter 3, page 28:

     Yet there are noble passages in his later poems: and even the latest have their own peculiar charm of serenity and kindliness,—a tranquil sunset, as it were, succeeding not unmeetly to the fiery splendours of his noontide course.

Translations

midday, noon

• Bulgarian: пладне (bg) n (pladne), обед (bg) m (obed)
• German: Mittagsstunde (de) f, Mittagszeit (de) f, Mittag (de) m
• Russian: по́лдень (ru) m (póldenʹ)

climax — see climax