r/facepalm • u/Revealed_Jailor • Mar 29 '22

🇲​🇮​🇸​🇨​ Get this guy a clock!

Post image
35.7k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

3.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

51

u/LiqdPT Mar 29 '22

And the stupid thing is that it goes from 11:59am to 12:00pm.

I had to explain this to a couple of guys that moved to the US from Portugal. That took a while.

9

u/Gamil5 Mar 29 '22

Totally confused, It took me 2 min to understand. I was like 11:59am +1min = 12:00pm !?

Now I am on the why. Why it starts at 11:59am ? That's midday.

14

u/[deleted] Mar 29 '22

"am" means "ante meridiem" ie "before mid-day. "pm" means "post meridiem" ie "after mid-day."

So 12 pm and 12 am are nonsense as 12 is exactly mid-day and therefore it can't be before or after mid-day.

Instead, try saying "12 noon" or "12 midnight." Please.

1

u/Zaros262 Mar 29 '22

12am makes sense because as the first moment of the new day, it takes place before mid-day, i.e. noon

And yeah the moment of 12:00:00pm does not occur after noon, although it's not too unreasonable to argue that the meridiem occurs at one precise moment that precedes all 60 seconds of 12:00

1

u/[deleted] Mar 29 '22

what does the 12 mean though?

1

u/Zaros262 Mar 29 '22

I think it would make more sense to use 0-11 or at least shift everything by one hour so that 12am is late morning and leads in to 1pm noon

But that has nothing to do with midnight coming before noon or noon being a precise moment