Noon (also midday or noon time) is usually defined as 12 o'clock in the daytime. The term midday is also used colloquially to refer to an arbitrary period of time in the middle of the day. Solar noon is when the sun crosses the meridian and is at its highest elevation in the sky, at 12 o'clock apparent solar time. The local or clock time of solar noon depends on the longitude and date. The opposite of noon is midnight.In many cultures in the Northern Hemisphere, noon had ancient geographic associations with the direction "south" (as did midnight with "north" in some cultures). Remnants of the noon = south association are preserved in the words for noon in French (Midi) and Italian (Mezzogiorno), both of which also refer to the southern parts of the respective countries. Modern Polish, Ukrainian, and Serbian go a step farther, with the words for noon (południe, південь, пoднe – literally "half-day") also meaning "south" and the words for "midnight" (północ, північ, пoнoħ – literally "half-night", as with English mid(dle) meaning "half") also meaning "north".