Daytime

How to spell daytime

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce daytime

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does daytime mean?

1. nounThe hours of the day between sunrise and sunset, when there is natural light.

Daytime in a sentence

• The bats sleep through the daytime and hunt at night.

• The clinic only accepts walk-in patients during daytime hours.

Where does daytime come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent compound built from two ancient native English words, 'day' and 'time'. 'Day' descends from the Old English 'dæg', a Germanic word meaning the period of daylight or a full twenty-four hour cycle, while 'time' comes from the Old English 'tima', meaning a stretch or span of duration. Both words are firmly Germanic in origin and have been part of English since its earliest written records. The pairing of the two into a single noun describing the hours of daylight is comparatively recent, becoming common in print from the early nineteenth century. Because both parts are familiar everyday words, the spelling holds no real surprises: it is simply 'day' followed by 'time', with no dropped or doubled letters.

How the word is built

• day (the period of daylight)
• time (a span or period)