midnight
part of speech
noun (midnight — uncountable)
meaning for a pupil
1) Midnight is twelve o'clock at night, the moment when one day ends and the next one begins. tree →
2) Midnight can mean the middle of the night, a very late hour. tree →
sense in the lessons
In maths and time lessons, midnight is 12:00 a.m. or 00:00 on the 24-hour clock; noon (midday) is 12:00 p.m. or 12:00. From midnight to noon is 12 hours. In everyday life, people stay up until midnight on New Year's Eve. In stories, midnight is a magical or spooky time — in Cinderella the magic ends at midnight. Phrases: «at midnight», «before midnight», «past midnight», «midnight feast», «burn the midnight oil» (work late into the night), «midnight blue».
examples
- Cinderella had to leave the ball before midnight. tree →
- We stayed up until midnight on New Year's Eve. tree →
- Midnight is 00:00 on the 24-hour clock. tree →
- The clock struck twelve at midnight. tree →
- We had a midnight feast at the sleepover. tree →
- It's past midnight; go to sleep! tree →
- From midnight to 6 a.m. is six hours. tree →
- The owl hooted in the middle of the night, just after midnight. tree →
- At midnight the cottage door opened. tree →
note
Uncountable: «at midnight», not «at the midnight». Midnight is 12 a.m.; noon is 12 p.m. — these are easy to mix up. In time problems, crossing midnight means the date changes: 11 p.m. + 2 hours = 1 a.m. the next day.
In the corpora
- Picture a city garden at midnight: a fox trots past the bins and somewhere a rabbit freezes, then zigzags away.
- He played Minecraft until midnight and felt like a spy.
- At midnight at a sleepover, Chloe gets homesick and wants to go home.
- Sharing a room means rows and midnight laughs.
- Sharing a room brings rows about noise, mess and lights, and also midnight laughs.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «midnight» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.