Colloquial use can be a strong argument if a term stands firm in the language. If you are reading this then the term does not stand firm. Ultimately, you will have to observe or ask others how they use "midnight [of xday]" - which is how colloquiality arises. Colloquere, colloquere! In the same way, "midnight" relates to a certain or conceptional night, not a day.
While definition-wise midnight should be neither AM nor PM, from philosophical and technical points midnight is both preceeding and succeeding some midday thus being both AM and PM; dito midday. Binding midnight and midday to AM or PM and still avoiding ambiguity requires understood convention which works in small, agreeing and identified groups only and so makes for bad use in wider language where the group and convention of a speaker is not easily identified.
It may be more useful to have 12 CM contra meridiem, opposite midday for midnight and 12 HM hoc meridiem, this midday for midday - relating to conceptional terms rather than any specific midday or day. So while "12am" may claim to be before midday it may just be treated as a synonym to "12pm" marrying the arguments of Damovisa and Hellion - with both designations being utterly useless to disambiguate except for standing convention.
So the "12" may be more significant. I do not know of any clock as opposed to what is called a "timer" - ugh , calendar or other time-giver counting time down.
Assuming a count-up, "12" has come after some "11" and something has been counting up a dozen times. That rather relates "12am" to whatever happened before. This could argue for midnight belonging to the day before. There could be an argument for convenience here if "nearest" was effectually defined. Time-wise, or is no further away and offers no less convenience. This replaced the ambiguity of "X's midnight" with that of "night of the date". This can only help if the night is sufficiently specified by the date which may not be the case.
Y Our mission, syctai, is to clarify the night before using "midnight" - unless speaking conceptionally. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. How should "midnight on Ask Question. Asked 10 years, 11 months ago. Active 1 year, 8 months ago. Viewed k times. From what I understand, the word "midnight" is usually interpreted incorrectly.
Some examples: "Midnight on the 10th of December" "Midnight Thursday" "Midnight tonight" are usually interpreted as: Straddling the 10th and the 11th of December Straddling Thursday and Friday Straddling today and tomorrow but should they technically mean: straddling the 9th and the 10th of December? This is much less clear. Technically is there a midnight "tonight", or is midnight "tomorrow morning"? It just means to finish the assignment before that time. By a date means before but including that date.
If you do not want to include that date, then use before instead. On this day. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home What does due at midnight mean?
Ben Davis May 31, What does due at midnight mean? Is midnight the end of the day or the beginning? Does due by date include that day? Does due by mean on or before? Does midnight mean today or tomorrow? What does pay by the 1st mean? What does by December 1st mean? Think how many computer operations could take place unnoticed in that no-man's land of a whole second second! Just make sure you specify the appropriate day.
Midnight and midday are neither am or pm as explained in the GMT link he provided. As 'x' approaches zero it never actually gets there just as it reciprocal never reaches infinity. Gary Reid, Wollongong Australia Midnight is neither 12pm or 12am, there is no such time. Midnight is 12 midnight and mid-day is 12 noon. All other usage is sloppy. As one reply says the armed forces use and George Redgrave, Crawley United Kingdom The disagreement about midnight stems from the fact that it is a boundary between two days.
There is no reason to prefere one over the other except a desite for standardisation. Following this, it is obvious that this same moment in time can also be called 12pm Monday because it is 12 hours after the Monday meridian or 12am Tuesday because it is 12 hours before the Tuesday meridian.
The very fact that both of these positions can be defended is reason to never use either. Similarly, noon is the meridian and is therefor neither am nor pm. We only call it 12 o'clock because of the number on the dial. There is no logical reason why this number cannot be replaced with a zero.
It is simply noon. Since we do not notate time backwards, 12 midnight is not 12 am, since it would then require 1 am to become 11 am and so on. Similarly since it is the fleeting instant that marks both the end of one day and the beginning of the next it belongs to both days and to neither ,it is not 12 pm. In reality midnight has no sooner been reached than it has been passed. The phrase "the stroke of midnight" is apt. As has been demonstrated by many of the previous answers, and because it is incorrect, the use of 12 am and 12 pm is inherently confusing.
To avoid this confusion it should be ended. The use of noon and midnight informally or 12 noon and 12 midnight or and should become practice. Bernard Maguire, Glasgow Scotland I have had fun reading all these answers. However, I have always held the fact that 12pm is noon.
Example: Counting in minutes, you would have am, am, am, am etc. Therefore it stands to reason you would have: am, am, pm, pm. It would just be odd to have: am, am, am, pm John Wood, Sheffield, England Use 12 midday or 12 midnight for clarity.
It is easy to call others morons. We need to realize that a clock gives us a means of reading time. Time is a fluid, always changing value. It is never what the clock says it is. Noon and midnight are for a infinitely small period of time as is any number on the clock represents. An example is the only clock that is correct is the one that is stopped. It gives the correct time twice a day. It is considered morning because it is ante meridian a.
Because of the potential for confusion, it is advisable to use 12 noon and 12 midnight. 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 Wednesday Midnight is the midnight when you still have the full day of Wednesday ahead of you.
Thursday Midnight is when the evening of Wednesday has just past. Midnight is pm.
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