meridies

From a dissimilation of earlier medīdiēs, derived from medius (“middle”) + diēs (“day”). The sense of 'south' is due to the southward orientation of the sun at noon in the northern hemisphere.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [mɛˈriː.di.eːs]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [meˈriː.d̪i.es]

merīdiēs m (genitive merīdiēī); fifth declension

1. midday, noon
2. south
   • c. 77 CE – 79 CE, Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 2.126.8:

     ā septentriōne et occidente sicciōrēs quam ā merīdiē et oriente

     from the North and West they [winds] are drier than from the South or East

Fifth-declension noun.

• (south wind): auster

• (antonym(s) of “north wind”): boreās, septentriō

compass points:  ^[edit]

• diēs
• merīdiē
• medīdiē

• “meridies”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “meridies”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "meridies", in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• meridies in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book‎^[1], London: Macmillan and Co.
  • to lie to the east, west, south, north: spectare in (vergere ad) orientem (solem), occidentem (solem), ad meridiem, in septentriones