Noontide
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Midday, noon. literary
"[…] 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: […]"
- 2 the middle of the day wordnet
- 3 Climax; high point. figuratively
"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."
Example
More examples"When noontide drew nigh they felt more ardently in love than ever; Chloe pined and languished at the sight of Daphnis's comeliness which seemed to be without flaw or blemish, and when Daphnis beheld Chloe in her fawn-skin and with the garland of pine-leaves about her brow holding out the bowl to him, he fancied that he beheld one of the Nymphs of the grotto, and drawing near he took the garland from her head and placed it on his own."
Etymology
From Middle English non-tyde, from Old English nōntīd (“noontide”), equivalent to noon + tide.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.