Word.ws English Dictionary

meridiem

meridiem noun: midday, noon.

Noun

meridiem (countable and uncountable, plural meridiems)

  1. (rare, uncountable) Midday, noon.
    • Quantities and frequencies are distributed as follows (neglecting the meridiem hour):[…]1919, J. R. Sutton, “A Lunar Period in the Rates of Evaporation and Rainfall?”, in Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, volumes VII (1918–19), Cape Town: the Society, page 108
    • The same female number 1 introduced inside the ice-box at 9 a.m., to 9:15 was in lethargy, pick up and put it inside the stove to 350 degrees, to 12 meridiem, was in excellent conditions.1983, David R. Iriarte, Scientific Works, →ISBN, page 15
  2. (countable) The property of a timestamp of being either a.m. or p.m.
    • The terminal responds N HH MM CR where N, HH, and MM are the meridiem, hour, and minutes, as above.1986 March, “Operation”, in Ampex 230 plus: Video Display Terminal: Operation Manual, section 10 (Setting the Time), page 3-42
    • If a 12-hour clock is specified, the eighth field (the meridiem indicator) is required.[…]If this input string is entered, the parse still recognizes “feb” as the month name and “am” as the meridiem indicator, even though the format string specified both of these fields as uppercase, and the month...1994 March, “System Time Operations”, in OpenVMS Programming Concepts Manual, Maynard, Mass.: Digital Equipment Corporation, section 6 (Date/Time Formatting Routines), subsection 2 (Selecting a...

Examples of meridiem in a sentence

  • From prior to first light to the meridiem – yes, that means noon – the activities around Leelanau are as varied as the people who call it home:2022 June 20, Ross Boissoneau, “It’s A Good Morning In The County”, in The Ticker:
  • if (hour < 12) { meridiem = 'am'; } else { meridiem = 'pm'; }2008 July, David Sawyer McFarland, “Working with Words, Numbers, and Dates”, in JavaScript: The Missing Manual, Pogue Press, →ISBN, part...
  • To the right of the radio buttons, complete the Start Time and End Time fields and select the meridiem from the AM/PM menu to define the time during which the schedule is in effect.2014 December, “Customize Firewall Protection”, in ProSAFE Dual WAN Gigabit SSL VPN Firewall: Model FVS336Gv3: Reference Manual, Netgear...
  • Ensure the meridiem (AM/PM) specification is set accordingly.2015, “IP Environment Setup”, in STB-3000: HD Commercial Interface Set-top Box: Commercial Mode Setup Guide, LG Electronics U.S.A., Inc....

Forms of meridiem

pluralmeridiems

Origin of meridiem

Back-formation from the phrases ante meridiem and post meridiem (more commonly a.m. and p.m.), from Latin merīdiem, accusative of merīdiēs (“midday, noon”).

Phrases with meridiem

Questions about meridiem

What does meridiem mean?
Meridiem means midday, noon.
How do you use meridiem in a sentence?
From prior to first light to the meridiem – yes, that means noon – the activities around Leelanau are as varied as the people who call it home:
What part of speech is meridiem?
Meridiem is a noun.
What is the plural of meridiem?
The plural of meridiem is meridiems.

Words near meridiem in the dictionary

  1. meridianed
  2. Meridiani Planum
  3. meridianing
  4. meridians
  5. meridic
  6. meridiem
  7. meridiems
  8. meridienne
  9. meridiennes
  10. meridiolestidan
  11. meridiolestidans

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: meridiem (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “meridiem.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/meridiem. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.