It's no surprise that midnight is the very middle of the night, the word itself stemming from the Old English mid-niht, from mid, "among" or "in the middle of," and night, from niht, which appropriately means both "night" and "darkness."
Midnight is the zero point in time when we start to build up 24 one-hour periods of time to make up a new day. So midnight is the point 0am. After a period of one hour we reach the point in time called 1am, and after 12 periods of one hour we reach the point called noon.
'Noon' means 'midday' or 12 o'clock during the day. 'Midnight' refers to 12 o'clock during the night.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language states "By convention, 12 AM denotes midnight and 12 PM denotes noon. Because of the potential for confusion, it is advisable to use 12 noon and 12 midnight."
It is common in transport timetables to use 23:59 Sunday or 00:01 Monday (in this example), or 11:59 p.m. or 12:01 a.m., to further reduce confusion. There are no standards established for the meaning of 12 a.m. and 12 p.m. It is often said that 12 a.m. Monday is midnight on Monday morning and 12 p.m. is mid-day.
The reason a new day starts at 12:00 goes back to ancient Egypt when the day was measured using sundials. The shadow on the face of a sundial tells the time, and the shadow depends on where the sun is in the sky. "When the sun is highest overhead and the shadow goes straight up to the top of the sundial, that's noon.
Some will say midnight is 12am, and therefore that midday (or noon) is 12pm. Others will say this doesn't make sense as noon can be neither am (before noon) or pm (after noon)!
As the dividing point between one day and another, midnight defies easy classification as either part of the preceding day or of the following day. Though there is no global unanimity on the issue, most often midnight is considered the start of a new day and is associated with the hour 00:00.
However, most digital clocks and most sources, including timeanddate.com, designate midnight as 12 am and noon as 12 pm.
It's all because of the conventions used with the "12-hour clock." 12:00 am is usually taken to mean midnight (and 12:00 pm is noon). At 59 minutes past midnight it is therefore 12:59 am, but a minute later it's 1:00 am.
Mid-afternoon: 2-4 p.m. Late- afternoon: 3-6 p.m. Evening: 6-9 p.m. Late evening: 9-midnight. Late at night: Midnight-6 a.m.
From 00:00 to 11:59 (of a 24-hour clock), the time is represented as A.M. Between 12:00 and 23:59 (of a 24-hour clock), the time is represented as P.M. A.M. means Ante Meridiem and P.M. means Post Meridiem.
The term you are probably looking for is the small hours. Collins defines this term as "the early hours of the morning, after midnight and before dawn." ...or 'wee hours'.
The 12-hour clock method defines all 24 hours of the day using the numbers 1 to 12, followed by am or pm. 5 AM is early in the morning and 5 PM is late in the afternoon; 1 AM is one hour after midnight, and 11 PM is one hour before midnight.
Answer and Explanation: Morning technically starts after midnight. However, 3 a.m. is too early to be considered part of the daytime. For most of the world, it is still dark outside at this time and most people are sleeping. So, 3 a.m. is considered night.
Re: 12 am = midnight or noon? Midnight is 12:00 pm. It is also 00:00 am. This is because it represents both the beginning and the ending of a set of numbers that runs from 00:00 to 12:00.
The ancient Egyptians are seen as the originators of the 24-hour day. The New Kingdom, which lasted from 1550 to 1070 bce, saw the introduction of a time system using 24 stars, 12 of which were used to mark the passage of the night.
What does “a.m.” mean? The term we associate with the morning, a.m., is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase ante merīdiem meaning “before midday.”
◊ The abbreviation a.m. stands for the Latin phrase ante meridiem, which means “before noon.” — compare p.m.
midnight means the last moment of a given day occurring before commencement of the next day.
Is midnight Friday the end of Friday or the start? Instead: 11:59 p.m. Friday or 12:01 a.m. Saturday.
On digital clocks and watches, "AM" stands for ante meridiem, meaning "before midday," while "PM" stands for post meridiem, or "after noon." By convention, 12 AM denotes midnight, while 12 PM denotes noon.
Synonyms of midnight (noun middle of the night) 12 o'clock at night. bewitching hour. dead of night.
Our 24-hour day comes from the ancient Egyptians who divided day-time into 10 hours they measured with devices such as shadow clocks, and added a twilight hour at the beginning and another one at the end of the day-time, says Lomb. "Night-time was divided in 12 hours, based on the observations of stars.