Definition of "noon"

noon¹

/nuːn/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural noons
1. The time of day when the Sun seems to reach its highest point in the sky; solar noon.
  Quotations
  The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.
  1933, Twentieth Amendment to the United States Constitution
  1. The mean time of solar noon, marked as twelve o'clock on most clocks.
2. (now rare) The corresponding time in the middle of the night; midnight.
  Quotations
  So the sad mother at the noon of night / From bloody Memphis stole her silent flight […] .
  1789, Erasmus Darwin, The Loves of the Plants, J. Johnson, page 116
  When night was at its noon I heard a voice chanting the Koran in sweetest accents […] .
  1885, Sir Richard Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Night 17
3. (obsolete) The ninth hour of the day counted from sunrise; around three o'clock in the afternoon.
4. (figurative) The highest point; culmination.
  Quotations
  In the very noon of that brilliant life which was destined to be so soon, and so fatally, overshadowed.
  1856, John Lothrop Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic. A History. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […]
verb
third-person singular simple present noons, present participle nooning, simple past and past participle nooned
1. To relax or sleep around midday
  Quotations
  We presently turned just aside from the trail into an episode of beautiful prairie, one of a succession along the plateau at the crest of the range. At this height of about five thousand feet, the snows remain until June. In this fair, oval, forest-circled prairie of my nooning, the grass was long and succulent, as if it grew in the bed of a drained lake.
  1853, Theodore Winthrop, The Canoe and the Saddle
  Between six and nine we made ten miles, which was plenty for a horse carrying triple—man, woman, and armor; then we stopped for a long nooning under some trees by a limpid brook.
  1889, Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court Chapter XX‎
  Well, we crossed and nooned, lying around on purpose to give them a good lead, and when we hit the trail back in these sand-hills, there he was, not a mile ahead, and you can see there was no chance to get around
  1906, Andy Adams, The Double Trail
  They nooned at a spring and squatted about the cold and blackened sticks of some former fire and ate cold beans and tortillas out of a newspaper.
  1992, Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses, page 157

noon²

/nuːn/

noun
plural noons
1. The letter ن in the Arabic script.