What does midnight mean?

Definitions for midnight
ˈmɪdˌnaɪtmid·night

This dictionary definitions page includes all the possible meanings, example usage and translations of the word midnight.

Princeton's WordNet

  1. midnightnoun

    12 o'clock at night; the middle of the night

    "young children should not be allowed to stay up until midnight"

Wiktionary

  1. midnightnoun

    The middle of the night; 12:00 am; on a 12-hour clock, 12:00 at night; on a 24-hour clock, 00:00.

  2. midnightnoun

    The middle of the night: the moment of time, which is equidistant between sunset and sunrise.

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary

  1. Midnightnoun

    The noon of night; the depth of night; twelve at night.

    Etymology: mid and night.

    To be up after midnight, and to go to bed then, is early; so that to go to bed after midnight, is to go to bed betimes. William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night.

    How now, you secret, black and midnight hags?
    What is’t you do? William Shakespeare, Macbeth.

    I hope my midnight studies, to make our countries flourish in mysterious and beneficent arts, have not ungratefully affected your intellects. Francis Bacon.

    By night he fled, and at midnight returned
    From compassing the earth; cautious of day. John Milton.

    After this time came on the midnight of the church, wherein the very names of the councils were forgotten, and men did only dream of what had past. Edward Stillingfleet.

    Some solitary cloister will I chuse,
    Coarse my attire, and short shall be my sleep,
    Broke by the melancholy midnight bell. John Dryden, Sp. Fryar.

    In all that dark midnight of popery there were still some gleams of light, some witnesses that arose to give testimony to the truth. Francis Atterbury.

    They can tell precisely what altitude the dog-star had at midnight or midnoon in Rome when Julius Cæsar was slain. Isaac Watts, Logick.

Wikipedia

  1. Midnight

    Midnight is the transition time from one day to the next – the moment when the date changes, on the local official clock time for any particular jurisdiction. By clock time, midnight is the opposite of noon, differing from it by 12 hours. Solar midnight is the time opposite to solar noon, when the Sun is closest to the nadir, and the night is equidistant from dusk and dawn. Due to the advent of time zones, which regularize time across a range of meridians, and daylight saving time, solar midnight rarely coincides with 12 midnight on the clock. Solar midnight depends on longitude and time of the year rather than on time zone. In ancient Roman timekeeping, midnight was halfway between sunset and sunrise (i.e., solar midnight), varying according to the seasons. In some Slavic languages, "midnight" has an additional geographic association with "north" (as "noon" does with "south"). Modern Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Serbian languages preserve this association with their words for "midnight" or "half-night" (północ, поўнач, північ, пoнoħ) also meaning "north."

ChatGPT

  1. Midnight

    Midnight refers to the time exactly halfway between sunset and sunrise, typically occurring at 12 o'clock at night. It marks the start of a new day on the 24-hour clock system and is often symbolized as the darkest hour during a 24-hour period.

Webster Dictionary

  1. Midnightnoun

    the middle of the night; twelve o'clock at night

  2. Midnightadjective

    being in, or characteristic of, the middle of the night; as, midnight studies; midnight gloom

  3. Etymology: [AS. midniht.]

Wikidata

  1. Midnight

    Midnight is the transition time period from one day to the next: the moment when the date changes. In ancient Roman timekeeping, midnight was halfway between sunset and sunrise, varying according to the seasons. Solar midnight is that time opposite of solar noon, when the sun is closest to nadir and the night is equidistant from dusk and dawn. Due to the advent of time zones, which make time identical across a range of meridians, and daylight saving time, it rarely coincides with midnight on a clock. Solar midnight is dependent on latitude and time of the year rather than on a time zone. In the northern hemisphere, "midnight" had an ancient geographic association with "north". Modern Polish and Ukrainian preserve this association with their words for "midnight", which also means "north".

The Roycroft Dictionary

  1. midnight

    1. The Pole of the hours; a pincushion on which sparkle all the seconds of a day; the keel of the good ship Tomorrow. 2. A chimney whence the dreams of today issue in smoke.

Suggested Resources

  1. midnight

    Song lyrics by midnight -- Explore a large variety of song lyrics performed by midnight on the Lyrics.com website.

Matched Categories

British National Corpus

  1. Spoken Corpus Frequency

    Rank popularity for the word 'midnight' in Spoken Corpus Frequency: #4808

  2. Written Corpus Frequency

    Rank popularity for the word 'midnight' in Written Corpus Frequency: #4275

  3. Nouns Frequency

    Rank popularity for the word 'midnight' in Nouns Frequency: #1942

How to pronounce midnight?

How to say midnight in sign language?

Numerology

  1. Chaldean Numerology

    The numerical value of midnight in Chaldean Numerology is: 9

  2. Pythagorean Numerology

    The numerical value of midnight in Pythagorean Numerology is: 3

Examples of midnight in a Sentence

  1. Ayako Nakayama:

    A change in Happy New Era '' may happen only once in our life time, so it's a happy day, and I wanted my child also to be present at that moment, i hope this is a peaceful era where everyone can live with smiling faces.' . Elsewhere, couples wanting to register their marriages as soon as the Reiwa era began at midnight had lined up at government offices, which set special desks for the paperwork. For 29-year-old Kenya Fujisaki, the move was mostly practical.

  2. Blanca Rivera:

    Around midnight, my sister-in-law called me and she was just crying like, ‘I think it just hit Miah. I think everything came to reality. We’re home, and she’s just crying and having a panic attack.

  3. Stephen Jay Gould:

    Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day.

  4. Rudyard Kipling:

    There rise her timeless capitals of empires daily born, whose plinths are laid at midnight and whose streets are packed at morn; and here come tired youths and maids that feign to love or sin in tones like rusty razor blades to tunes like smitten tin.

  5. Bebars Mishal:

    The truce was supposed to have come into effect at 12 midnight, but now there is no truce.

Popularity rank by frequency of use

midnight#1#5521#10000

Translations for midnight

From our Multilingual Translation Dictionary

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"midnight." Definitions.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 Mar. 2024. <https://www.definitions.net/definition/midnight>.

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    either of two different animal or plant species living in close association but not interdependent
    A sesquipedalian
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