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Is there a single word for time of the day?

A collective expression for morning, afternoon, evening, etc.

An example I can think of to better explain what I'm looking for:

Good ____! - Insert the correct time/part of the day here to greet someone at 11 AM.

In the above sentence, I would like to replace "time/part of the day" with a single word.

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    @Mynamite In your opinion, day is synonym with time of the day?
    – Lord Zsolt
    Commented Aug 20, 2014 at 9:27
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    @LordZsolt, this question has been asked and answered before (so don't get upset if this question is closed as a duplicate), though personally I find the answers unsatisfactory. In short, you've got "hour" (an hour of the day can refer to more than a 60 minute period, eg the Catholic canonical hours include lauds, vespers, and compline), "period" (which is the the word you'd find used if you looked up morning, evening etc), daypart (jargon in broadcasting), watch (on a ship), salat (in Islam, if I understand correctly), but no proper hypernym for morning, etc.
    – Dan Bron
    Commented Aug 20, 2014 at 9:47
  • 'Day' can mean several things, it's easy to look them up. 24 hours; day as opposed to night; day as an era ("In my day we used to etc"). What do you mean by 'time of the day'? Morning, afternoon and evening are parts of a day, therefore the collective expression must surely be....
    – Mynamite
    Commented Aug 20, 2014 at 9:48
  • Edited for clarification.
    – Lord Zsolt
    Commented Aug 20, 2014 at 11:20
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    Are you looking for the name of the group of words that contains "morning", "afternoon", etc... I know those as parts of the day. So maybe daypart (mentioned above by Dan Bron) could be adopted for this use?
    – Theraot
    Commented Dec 30, 2015 at 12:22

3 Answers 3

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If you just use the word time it should pretty much cover what you are looking for.

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    Not in the example given, no. “Insert the correct time to greet someone at 11 AM” makes no sense at all—the only possible answer the person doing the test (whatever exactly it is) would be able to guess at would be “11 AM”, since that is the only possible time to greet someone at 11 AM.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Aug 20, 2014 at 11:52
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    @JanusBahsJacquet That's because the instruction is badly worded. These greetings are really idioms, and it always make sense to label their individual words. The instruction should say something like "Give the complete greeting appropriate for 11AM"
    – curiousdannii
    Commented Aug 20, 2014 at 12:21
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    Obviously the example is badly worded, I just used it to provide a context for the word I'm looking for.
    – Lord Zsolt
    Commented Aug 20, 2014 at 12:35
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There is no other word in colloquial American English in general use besides mid-morning or morning for 11:00 a.m. But you would never say, Good Mid-morning. Good morning is typically reserved for first thing in the morning, say up to 10:00 a.m., depending on regional habits. Good day works well for 11:00 a.m. There is Good afternoon, Good evening, and good night, but those are the time of day ranges in typical use, few beyond those without sounding unusual.

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If there can be an evil hour, an early hour, or even an eleventh hour -- then there surely must also be a "Good hour!" at our disposal.

In case someone would rather say "hour" (in an fit of exactitude, precision, or specificity) instead of "morning", "afternoon", or "evening".

And in fact James Main Dixon did list "to keep good hours" among his English Idioms. Of course, the meaning has changed a little in over a century.

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