12 O'clock

Time ticks away, and a day of travels takes you from light to dark and back again, all the while the ever-present counter of time ticks like a faithful, although somewhat sinister friend. You try not to notice how much time has passed, as you want to savor every moment, however you can't help but note how much has happened thus far, and how little time is left. Noon is usually defined as 12 o'clock in the daytime. However the term midday is used colloquially to refer to a range of time, usually 11-1. The word noon is also used informally to mean midday regarding the location of the sun, as opposed to the middle of one's day. Although this is a time around the middle of the day when people in many countries take a lunch break. In many cultures in the northern hemisphere, noon had ancient geographic associations with the direction "south" (as did midnight with "north" in some cultures). Remnants of the noon = south association are preserved in the words for noon in French (midi) and Italian (mezzogiorno), both of which also refer to the southern parts of the respective countries. Midnight marks the beginning and ending of each day in civil time throughout the world. It is the dividing point between one day and another. With 12-hour time notation, most authorities recommend avoiding confusion between noon and midnight by using "midnight", "12 midnight", or "12:00 midnight." In the northern hemisphere, "midnight" had an ancient geographic association with "north". Modern Polish and Ukrainian preserve this association with their words for "midnight" ("północ", "північ" – literally "half-night"), which also means "north".