933: noon Jun 29, 2017

If asked to meet someone at noon, it would be understood that that means twelve o'clock. Nevertheless, 'noon' comes from the Old English word 'nōn' denoting "the ninth hour from sunrise", though this didn't mean nine o'clock in the morning either. Instead measuring from six in the morning when the sun rose, 'noon' referred to three in the afternoon, as we would say now. The Old English word came from Latin, and is related to the ecclesiastical noun 'none' (or nones), not to be confused with the pronoun and adverb which is Germanic in origin, denoting a time of prayers and customary meal. Up through the 12th century this is all the word would have meant, but then while the customary time for these became earlier around the 14th century, the word did not. This same shift occurred in Dutch with the word 'noen'.