i know at midday is right, but i don’t see why i can’t use during midday. is it just wrong? is it i should never use during midday? if i can, when shouldn’t i use it?
the sentence was:
we usually stay indoors during midday when the sun is directly overhead.
Yes, ‘during midday’ seems fine to me. Some people, I suppose, think ‘midday’ means ‘noon’ only, but it does not.
does ‘midday’ have other meaning too?
You must say ‘at midday’ because, by definition, midday is a single point in time - it’s a shortened form of ‘the middle of the day’ also known as ‘noon’. You should also say ‘at noon’.
Technically, the sun is only directly overhead at one point in time. We know that its position often is used to refer to the middle period of the day, and therefore you would normally get away with ‘while the sun is directly overhead’, suggesting a period of time.
If you use ‘during midday’ in an exam you are likely to loose a point.
It doesn’t have any other common English meaning but is sometimes used as a name, for TV programs for example. Strangely, it’s position in time may also be varied in some contexts, since it can be used in the description: ‘midday meal’ which is not necessarily taken at 12:00 precisely. In this case you could say: ‘during the midday meal’.
Sorry, that may be your usage, but it is not completely true, Anglo. Here are a couple of on-line definitions for a broader meaning:
so ‘at midday’ and ‘during midday’ are both grammatically correct and they have the exact same meaning?
No. ‘At midday’ would refer to a point in time. ‘During midday’ (right or wrong) would suggest a period of time.
Obviously, you can say “during the midday news broadcast” because it refers to a period of time. The fact that midday might not be exactly ‘one minute after 11.59am’, which is one definition, or ‘when the sun is at its highest point in the sky’ which is another, does not change the concept of a point in time. The word evolved long before most people had timepieces, and therefore was a useful time reference. It would not have been accurate: many people would have referred to a sundial and that point in time would have been quite flexible. It’s also true that many people do use ‘midday’ in a non specific way.
Language is not a science, it evolves - English in particular. If enough people agree on a different usage it becomes accepted. In time, midday could come to mean (the period between) 11am to 1pm, for example. If you search hard enough you will find alternative definitions for many words, that doesn’t necessarily make them right. There is also a well known problem that EFL teachers become habituated to mis-use of the language: if you hear it often enough it begins to sound ok. Examiners, however, are a different ‘breed’. They tend to be pedantic and revel in precise definitions, often citing a particular dictionary as their reference.
You will not progress further with this discussion because it has moved into the realms of opinion, but as a student of English you should take note of the following: In an exam, if you say “at midday”, you will NEVER be wrong, it is always correct; if you say “during midday” you will often be found wrong. If you wish to use the word ‘during’, I suggest you say ‘during the middle of the day’.
JWBB, MM and Anyone Interested
As an aside, it occurs to me that it might be helpful to understand the procedures undertaken by an English examining body when they have a potential dispute, say between a marker and the chief examiner for that paper. (They certainly don’t ask for an opinion on a forum such as this one!) :shock:
Taking the phrase ‘during midday’ as an example, an online dictionary such as AskOxford [askoxford.com] will give no result (‘at midday’ gives about 20). The Oxford English Dictionary, however, which attempts to be the definitive record of the English language, may give, as a secondary meaning for midday, ‘a period at the middle of the day’ citing examples, usually of poetic or literary use, e.g. 1993 M.Angelou “…, and cold, wet, and wintry middays,…” Sporadic use by random individuals would actually be interpreted as mis-use and would therefore not validate the meaning.
The procedure the examiner will follow (and you can do this yourself) will be to consult a specialised repository of CURRENT language and usage such as the British National Corpus which you can find here:
(“The British National Corpus (BNC) is a 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent a wide cross-section of current British English, both spoken and written.”)
His or her decision will be based on the results of this search, so in this case:
Results of your search
Your query was: at midday
Here is a random selection of 50 solutions from the 135 found…
Results of your search
Your query was: during midday
No solutions found for this query!
I hope this is useful to you. 
Perhaps the BNC is becoming dated. Interestingly, the Corpus of Contemporary American English produced 27 instances:
1 2007 MAG OutdoorLife Big deer move only at dawn and dusk, so sitting in a stand during midday is a waste of time. Busted: Let’s see, two years ago
2 2006 ACAD PSAJournal you may only have a short time at a very special location. Even during midday, with the sun directly overhead, it might be the only opportunity for a
3 2005 MAG FieldStream Put on morning and late-afternoon drives. These are normally supposed to be conducted during midday, when deer are sticking to dense bedding cover. With the moon full and
4 2005 MAG FieldStream likely be in the first or last hour of light. Take a nap during midday. After five weeks of hunting the rut, you deserve a break. RUT
5 2004 FIC ChildDigest stacking the cans together. His house was comfortable most of the time except during midday, when it would be as hot as an oven inside. The second little
6 2004 MAG FieldStream the day, and focus on pockets of cover in or near feeding fields during midday. For bob-whites, work thicker woody cover, such as shelterbelts, plum thickets
7 2004 MAG ChildDigest stacking the cans together. His house was comfortable most of the time except during midday, when it would be as hot as an oven inside. The second little
8 2002 MAG AmerArtist , cool tint of color. # When sunshine is at its greatest strength during midday, glare invades warm lighting. Glare occurs as strong light attempts to create a
9 2002 MAG SatEvenPost pastor of a Catholic church in New York City collapsed from a heart attack during midday services, his congregation froze, momentarily bewildered. Seconds later, cell phones emerged
10 2002 NEWS NewYorkTimes a week. Many have morning, late afternoon and evening hours and close during midday and on weekends. # Lower prices also mean few of the services, like
11 2000 SPOK NPR_Morning the more you should wear sunscreen and stay out of the sun, especially during midday. Are you back campaigning? I mean, for other candidates.
12 2000 ACAD PSAJournal is fleeting, however, capturing it with your camera demands advance planning. During midday, for instance, I’ll look for potential shooting locales to return to that
13 1999 MAG OutdoorLife winter. Cooler water keeps these busters inactive during the early morning, but during midday and right up to dark they hit the Muddler as if it were a mortal
14 1998 MAG Bicycling become accustomed to the cold, you must exercise in the cold. Ride during midday. The sunlight will help you stay warmer. It’s also easier for drivers
15 1998 ACAD Bioscience Whereas a possible interpretation of vertical orientation of leaves is to reduce summer heating during midday (Gates 1980), ecophysiological evidence suggests that vertical orientation is actually a strategy
16 1997 MAG FieldStream basis, don’t expect to find them there with any consistency. Particularly during midday, I like to concentrate on middle-depth structure such as points, creek channels,
17 1995 MAG FieldStream the bass school up near underwater reefs in 20 to 25 feet of water during midday. In September and October big fish are in shallow water again, feeding on
18 1995 MAG Prevention to keep their sanity. They typically may walk for 1 to 1/2 hours during midday. " The Netherlands # Few ranch homes. In the seventeenth century, for
19 1994 MAG Forbes # caddie. He recalled in later years competing with his fellow lads, during midday lunch breaks, for bottles of ginger beer on a pitch-and-putt course the caddies had
20 1993 MAG OutdoorLife the woods all day. Carry your lunch with you, and be observant during midday, when other hunters moving through the woods will often spook deer. Take advantage
21 1993 MAG OutdoorLife other hunters, exposing themselves as they do so. Keep using your binoculars during midday, when the sun is highest and animal activity should be at a minimum.
22 1993 ACAD Ethnology earth oven); boiled; and raw. Roasting is most common. During midday work breaks and in the evening, families are seen simply placing yams on flat
23 1992 MAG OutdoorLife cornfield is when it’s windy, making it an ideal tactic to use during midday as opposed to the usually calmer morning and evening hours. When the wind is
24 1992 MAG FieldStream letting it sit. The strikes were frequent and savage. In deep water during midday hours I cast a deep-running black-and-white Shad Rap or one with a yellow-perch paint job
25 1992 MAG NaturalHist at night was greater. The turtles spent relatively long periods at the surface during midday, perhaps basking to raise their body temperature. Why the incessant diving? At
26 1992 MAG FieldStream balsam a few rips with its antlers, then moving on to bed down during midday in the cedars. I had hunted four days without seeing a deer. I
27 1990 NEWS SanFrancisco feet deep in spring. In summer trollers drop to 40 or 50 feet during midday and 20-30 feet early and late. # Bullards Bar is tucked into the folds
It isn’t dated, this simply highlights one of many differences in American and British English usage, of which international teachers need to be aware when advising their students. Clearly ‘during’ and ‘at’ do convey slightly different meanings which was one question posed.
My original point was essentially that ‘at midday’ will always be correct and is therefore a ‘safe bet’.
Hi,
It might be interesting (and I do say ‘might’) to see how the ‘at’ and ‘during’ uses work with ‘midnight’. Personally I’d be hard pushed to explain ‘during midnight.’
But then again I wouldn’t be able to handle:
Alan
I agree, Alan. In AmE, ‘midday’ does not necessarily equate with the point in time called ‘noon’. The word ‘midnight’, however, is a point in time which equates with…‘midnight’. There is no other word floating around to be associated with it-- and as often happens with synonyms, have one meaning drift away from the other.
so are you saying there are ‘at midday’ and ‘during midday’, but definitely no ‘during midnight’?!
That’s what I think. The only four entries in the CCAE are with ‘midnight’ as an an adjective (as are four of the 24 entries for ‘during midday’ above-- e.g. #24, ‘during midday hours’).
That’s interesting. I always think that midday and midnight are similar. Well, thanks for explaning these to me.
Use of An Electronic Corpus
When consulting an electronic corpus to make an assessment of word usage it is important to understand what you are dealing with. The Contemporary American Corpus, for example, does ‘exactly what it says on the tin’. It provides a cross section of contemporary spoken and written American English usage from a variety of sources. In addition to accepted use, this may include slang, misuse and simply lazy or sloppy use. Further, it is not international, and it certainly does not, in any way, attempt to define standard accepted use. In turn, the reliability of that body as an indicator of standard use will depend both on the source of its material, and also on the editorial attitude of the associated publishers. For example, a ‘pop’ magazine might include far more slang than say The New York Times. Other online facilities may attempt to cover international English usage and include data from a much wider spectrum of source materials. An example of this would be ‘Cobuild’.
For the student, presumably anxious to learn Standard International English (since that is what they will normally be tested on), this presents a problem: how should one interpret the results? A word such as ‘crore’ for example might only appear a couple of times if at all. Many native English speakers will never have heard of it. Yet in some parts of the world it is in regular daily use by millions of people! There is no question that this word is acceptable, it simply has a particular geographic origin and location.
At this point we might look once again at the phrase ‘during midday’, since this is a good example of a construction which clearly appears, at first sight, to be in regular use. Does its current use qualify it as ‘Standard English’? Does it matter? Who does it matter to? Well, for most people it doesn’t matter at all: we all know what the user means (albeit mainly from the context). It matters to the student who has an exam to pass, and it matters to the examiner. Bear in mind that in an exam it would only be seriously challenged in the event of a boundary mark or a border line fail - so not very often.
Having said that, there is another scenario where there might be a dispute: in a ‘missing word match’ question, e.g. “Underline the most appropriate missing word in the following sentence: Otters can often be seen swimming ____ midday. (while, in, during, at) etc.” A marker might flag up the fact that ‘during’ is regularly being selected and wonders if it should be allowed. (This will happen increasingly as automated marking systems are deployed, since they will be programmed to throw up such anomalies.) This usage seems not to appear in the grammar books, so the chief examiner is called on to make a decision. Note: The examiner has no wish to catch the students out, if there is reasonable doubt, the candidate would normally be awarded the mark.
There is no hard and fast rule. In the example above, the search throws up twenty or so possible instances of use, an average of around one per year over the short period analysed. With a thousand-year-old word as common as ‘midday’, and in general use across all groups of society, we would expect to see several hundred citations from all types of publication, including Washington Post, New Yorker, various learned journals, etc., as we would if we searched on ‘at midday’. What we actually find is that its use appears predominantly limited to a handful of magazine articles almost exclusively devoted to hunting and fishing, indeed several of these articles appear to have been written by the same hand. The examiner might decide this was actually telling us more about the source than confirming the structure’s place in ‘Standard English’. Could it be that it indicates sloppy usage, perhaps a lazy euphemism for ‘the middle of the day’? The editor of an outdoor magazine is unlikely to be very concerned either way.
So, what should we teach the student? The safest explanation is probably that the accepted meaning of ‘midday’ is ‘a point in time’ so ‘at midday’ is correct, but that it is also occasionally used to mean ‘a period of time around the middle of the day’. Will it become part of Standard International English? By definition, it cannot simultaneously mean both ‘a point in time’ and ‘a period of time’. In order to do so its meaning has to become ambiguous. Is there a general need for this additional meaning, which would eventually drive it into standard use? Only time will tell.
Hi AS,
I think you’ve well and truly made your point about ‘midday’. On this forum we try to present a broad picture. And it can so happen that one native English speaker may say one meaning and another say something different. Over the last few years I have referred on occasion to a contributor ‘flogging a dead horse’ and I fear that’s exactly what you are doing.
And incidentally what on earth do you mean by describing ‘midday’ as a lazy euphemism? I still haven’t got over your recent comment:
Come on now! Come down off that high horse of yours or stop flogging it!
Alan