noontide

plural noontides

1. literaryMidday, noon.

   The favorite noontide mess of the Andalusian peasantry; consisting of cucumbers shred fine, bread-crumbs, oil, vinegar, and water fresh from the spring.

   1885, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, chapter LIII, in John Ormsby, transl., The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha […] In Four Vols, volume II, London: Smith, Elder & Co. […], →OCLC, part I, footnote 1, page 369

   2 more examples

   […] I haue bedymn'd / The Noone tide Sun, call'd forth the mutenous windes, / And twixt the greene Sea, and the azur'd vault / Set roaring warre: […]

   1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i], page 16

   Around them all, Negroes carried gunboats of mashed potatoes, spinach, shrimp, zucchini, pot roast, to the long, glittering steam tables, preparing to feed a noontide invasion of Yoyodyne workers.

   1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 4, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 59

   Synonyms: meridian, nones, sext, 12 o'clock, 12 noon, 12 p.m., high noon, meridian

2. figurativelyClimax; high point.

   Yet there are noble passages in his later poems: and even the latest have their own peculiar charm of serenity and kindliness,—a tranquil sunset, as it were, succeeding not unmeetly to the fiery splendours of his noontide course.

   1879, F. D. Morice, Pindar, chapter 3, page 28

   Synonyms: peak, pinnacle, zenith, acme, apex, zenith, apogee, apotheosis