Example sentences
zhōng中wǔ午chī吃shén什me么？
What's for lunch?
zhōng中wǔ午jiàn见。
See you at noon.
About this word
中 is middle and 午 is the old name for the noon hour, so 中午 is "the middle of the noon period". 午 is one of the twelve earthly branches, the old timekeeping cycle that cut the day into two-hour blocks, and 午 covered roughly eleven to one. That is why the day is bracketed by 上午 (before noon), 中午, and 下午 (afternoon), and why lunch is 午饭.
The story behind the character
中
中 is actually a flag. The vertical stroke is the pole, and the box is the banner. Armies planted a flag in the center of camp, and that center became 中. You think of it as "middle," but it's a flag standing in the middle.
午
午 is a pestle: thick at both ends, thin in the middle, the stick for pounding grain. That is how most scholars read it. Xu Shen glossed it differently, 午, 啎也, to go against, which follows the sound more than the picture. 午 got borrowed for the seventh earthly branch, the one covering eleven to one, so midday is 午. The pestle had to be reissued as 杵.