mediodía

Forms

mediodía m (plural mediodías)^[1] Old Spanish also had the contracted meidía or meydía, used by Berceo.^[2][3] The compound was often written as two words, medio día.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is a compound from Spanish medio (“middle, half”) + día (“day”), “the middle of the day”.^[1][6][7] medio goes back to Latin medius, and día to diēs.^[8]

Latin itself said merīdiēs (“midday, noon; south”), and the OLD and Corominas explain it as a dissimilated form of a compound of the same two Latin words.^[9][10] De Vaan lists it among the derivatives of the Latin adjective.^[11] Spanish keeps that Latin word only in learned borrowings such as meridiano and meridional.^[10]

Other Romance languages formed the same compound: Portuguese meio-dia, Catalan migdia, Occitan mieidia, French midi and Italian mezzodì.^[1] The DCVB derives the Catalan word from a phrase Vulgar Latin medio die that replaced the classical noun.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the compound to a charter of 1124 in Oelschläger's list.^[10][7] In literature it first appears in the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca (c. 1215, in a 14th-century copy): Mediodía era essa hora “it was the hour of noon”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Already in the prose of Alfonso X the word meant both the moment when the sun stands highest and the south, where the sun stands at that hour.^[13] The sense “south” is Latin as well (merīdiēs), and is shared by midi and Italian.^[6] Nebrija glossed medio dia as the southern part, Latin meridies.^[14] The 19th-century dictionaries added the nautical sense of the south wind, opposed to the tramontana or north wind, and the phrase hacer mediodía “to stop on a journey to eat”.^[15]

In Spain, and in Leonese, the word also names the hour of the midday meal.^[1][16] The DLE now separates the astronomical moment from the vague period around twelve o'clock.^[17]

Timeline

• 1124 – first record, in a charter.^[10][7]
• c. 1215 – the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca (in a 14th-century copy) has mediodía for the hour of noon.^[2]
• c. 1236 – Berceo's Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos (in a late 13th-century copy) has the form meidía.^[2]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses medio dia for the south.^[13]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses it with Latin meridies.^[14]
• 1549 – the first record from the Americas, in Mexico, for the hour of a meal.^[5]
• 1846 – Salvá records the south wind and the phrase hacer mediodía.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. noon: the moment when the sun is at its highest point above the horizon.^[17][1]
2. midday: the period of indefinite length around twelve o'clock: Comemos a mediodía.^[17][1]
3. (Spain) The midday meal break, lunchtime.^[1][16]
4. The south, as a cardinal point.^[17][1]
5. The south of a place; a region lying south of another: el mediodía de la isla.^[17]

Related words

• meridional
• meridiano
• Latin merīdiēs
• French midi

Usage notes

Mediodía medio is the moment that divides the mean civil day into two equal halves, and mediodía verdadero the sun's highest point.^[17] When it names the south as a cardinal point, the 2001 edition of the Academy's dictionary wrote it with a capital, Mediodía.^[18]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. mediodía
3. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1929), Vocabulario medieval castellano, Madrid: Librería y Casa Editorial Hernando, p. s.v. mediodía
4. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. mediodía
5. ^ a b Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. mediodía
6. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. mediodía
7. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. medio
8. ^ Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. mediodía
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. meridies
10. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 11
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. migdia
13. ^ a b Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. mediodía
14. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 378
15. ^ a b Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 706
16. ^ a b Le Men Loyer, Janick (2002–2012), Léxico del leonés actual, 4 vols., León: Centro de Estudios e Investigación San Isidoro; electronic version, Universidad de León, p. s.v. mediodía
17. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. mediodía
18. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. mediodía