Ambiguity Poll: What does "Saturday at midnight" mean to you?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’d think this would be pretty straight forward but there seem to be two common interpretations:

12AM on Saturday, that is to say 00:00 Saturday, 1 hour past 11:00PM/23:00 on Friday.
OR
12AM on SUNDAY, 24:00 on Saturday/00:00 on Sunday (concurrently), or 1 hour past 11:00Pm/23:00 on Saturday.

I’m in the first camp, but between all the people I know it seems split 50/50, leaving the construction of “midnight” entirely useless.

When someone says “Saturday” (or whatever day) “at midnight” what springs to mind first? The midnight occurring Saturday night or Saturday morning?

2

I take it to mean you’ve lived through Saturday, it’s now midnight going into Sunday.

3

I agree with runner pat.

4

Midnight on Saturday means half way between noon on Saturday and noon on Sunday, to me. The other way is silly, how could midnight saturday come before Saturday morning cartoons?

5

To me, it means midnight Saturday night going into Sunday. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not Sunday until I get up the next morning.

6

I think it’s the first option, 12AM on Saturday, that is to say 00:00 Saturday, 1 hour past 11:00PM/23:00 on Friday. Though the more I think about it, the more weird it feels.

Anyway, I guess the best way around this is to have the event begin at 11:59 pm on Friday. (Or on Saturday, if that’s what you mean.) That way everyone knows which night it is.

7

This one.

8

I would automatically assume Saturday-night-going-into-Sunday-morning, but if someone wanted me to be somewhere at that time, I would double-check with them.

Then I would probably tell them that, no, I can’t be there, because I plan to be asleep at that time…

9

In America, Saturday night follows Saturday afternoon, Saturday afternoon, itself, follows Saturday morning.
Sunday morning follows Saturday midnight.

10

I don’t know the answer (totally ambiguous IMHO) but let me recount a story that was recently in the ndws up here in the frozen north. The Ontario Teachers’ Federation was about to buy Bell Canada or a large piece thereof. (Why they would buy into a sunset business is beyond my ken.) The intent to purchase had a clause in it that said that Bell’s accountant had to provide certain financial assurances by 12:00 AM on a certain date. For the sake of argument, let’s say Dec. 15. It was a date in December at any rate. So at 11:59 PM on Dec. 14, the Teachers notified Bell that, the assurances not having been received, they were withdrawing their offer. Bell replied that they jumped the gun by 24 hours and were going to be sued for several billion dollars.

I don’t think the suit has yet been filed and since the accountant had already refused to give those assurances, it doesn’t seem to me that Bell has much of a case. But even lawyers can be so careless as to not specify the date unambiguously.

11

Regarding the ambiguity of 12am and 12pm, I remember that Johnny Carson once had as a guest a guy who received a parking ticket because the meter said something like no parking from 7am-12pm and he assumed noon was meant. Carson actually called someone at the observatory in Greenwich, who confirmed that 12am and 12pm were ambiguous and to be avoided.

12

And to answer the question, I would assume that immediately after 11:59:59pm on Saturday is what is meant.

13

Agreed.

To add : I used to manage bars the had bands that didn’t start until midnight. We advertised those bands as playing Saturday night.

14

I agree with everyone else. Saturday midnight would occur one minute after Saturday at 11:59 PM.

15

The problem is that “day” can have two meanings. The first is “daylight hours” and the second is “the 24 hour period corresponding to a particular date.” If someone were to tell me “I’ll get in town tonight, just after midnight,” it would be clear to me that he is referring to a time that occurs sometime before the sun comes up again. So “midnight” tonight is not a useless concept at all.

16

Saturday night into Sunday morning.

17

This is why the 24-hour clock has two ways of writing ‘midnight’: 00:00 and 24:00.

If it’s midnight 00:00, it’s the midnight that starts the calendar day in in question. If it’s 24:00, it’s the midnight that ends the calendar day in in question. Thus, 00:00 on December 15th comes before 9:00, noon, and 17:00 on December 15th, and they all come before 24:00 on December 15th.

18

Only because of sloppiness.
There is NO 24:00 on a 24-hour clock. The day runs from 00:00:00 to 23:59:59…

By the same token, on a 12 hour clock, Midnight on Saturday is defined as the instant that starts Saturday, i.e- just after 11:59:59pm on Friday. There is only one 12:00:00am per day. Unfortunately, common usage has made this ambiguous, and I myself would assume that Midnight on Saturday should be taken at 12:00am Sunday morning. As mentioned above, it’s always best to be explicit.

19

Saturday at midnight is the moment before Sunday starts.

I had a paper due at Tuesday at midnight earlier this week (to be turned in online). I had a moment of confusion, too, but eventually decided that it was due at almost-Wednesday. I got it back today (got an A!) and the professor didn’t say anything about a problem, so I guess I got it right.

20

Exactly. I’m shocked that 50% of the people the OP knows think otherwise.