The word noon is derived from Latin nona hora, the ninth hour of the day, and is related to the liturgical term none. The Roman and Western European medieval monastic day began at 6:00 a.m. (06:00) at the equinox by modern timekeeping, so the ninth hour started at what is now 3:00 p.m. (15:00) at the equinox. In English, the meaning of the word shifted to midday and the time gradually moved back to 12:00 local time (that is, not taking into account the modern invention of time zones). The change began in the 12th century and was fixed by the 14th century
12:14 could also be 3:14 -- year start 6am equinox 20 March 3.20 --- day one 3.21 777
The first hour, called Prime, rang at 6:00 a.m.; hour three (Terce) rang at 9:00 a.m.; hour six (Sext) rang at 12:00 p.m.; and hour nine (None) rang at 3:00 p.m. The early Catholic Church adopted these daily patterns in their rituals, and monks recited prayers at the canonical hours of terce, sext and none every day.
What does this have to do with “noon”? Well, the word for the ninth hour, specifically the ninth hour of daylight, so 3:00, became “non” in Old English. As church traditions changed, the canonical hours of “non” began to happen earlier, closer to 12:00 p.m. We still don’t know if the time of the midday meal shifted from 3:00 to 12:00 or whether the time of Church prayers shifted, or both, but by the early 1200s, “noon” came to mean midday. In the 1300s, the earliest mechanical clocks showed a 24-hour dial, but by the 1500s, the 12-hour dial, starting at midnight, became standard. (The word afternoon came into common usage around this time as well.)
Like our words September, October, November, and December, noon is a fossil word that embeds customs of former ages.”
“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the
fl ood, leads on to fortune.”
—Shakespeare
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every
purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time
to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is
planted.”
—King Solomon
Scarab
