| gen. |
ante meridiem; a.m. (It is not always clear what times "12:00 a.m." and "12:00 p.m." denote. From the Latin words meridies (midday), ante (before) and post (after), the term ante meridiem (a.m.) means before midday and post meridiem (p.m.) means after midday. Since strictly speaking "noon" (midday) is neither before nor after itself, the terms a.m. and p.m. do not apply. However, since 12:01 p.m. is after noon, it is common to extend this usage for 12:00 p.m. to denote noon. That leaves 12:00 a.m. to be used for midnight at the beginning of the day, continuing to 12.01 a.m. that same day.  wikipedia.org Alexander Demidov); ack emma (a.m. в радиопередаче); Fore Noon (Leonid Dzhepko); before noon (ННатальЯ) |
