Midday

How to spell midday

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce midday

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does midday mean?

1. nounThe middle of the day; noon or the hours immediately around it.

Midday in a sentence

• The meeting was scheduled for midday so everyone could attend before lunch.

• By midday the temperature in the car park had become unbearable.

Where does midday come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English compound, joining the Old English mid, meaning 'middle', to dæg, meaning 'day'. The form middæg is recorded in Old English well over a thousand years ago, describing the exact middle of the daylight hours, which is to say noon. Both halves survive almost unchanged in modern English, which is why the spelling simply stacks the two whole words together. The double 'd' that trips some writers is not a strange doubling at all; it is just the final 'd' of mid meeting the first 'd' of day. The same mid element shows up in plain relatives such as midnight, midweek and midsummer.

How the word is built

• mid- (middle)
• day (the period of daylight)