hour
/ˈaʊə
/noun
1A period of time equal to a twenty-fourth part of a day and night and divided into 60 minutes: an extra hour of daylight in the winter evenings rates of pay were low, starting at £3.20 an hour [as modifier, usually with preceding numeral]: a two-hour operation...
- The throw in time is 7.30 and if the sides are again deadlocked at the end of the hour thirty minutes extra time will be played.
- It may be minutes, hours days or even years that you are helping yet the gratitude will be there.
- Seconds turned to minutes, and minutes turned into hours with equal grace and ease.
1.1A more indefinite period of time: during the early hours of the morning...
- He tripped this morning and he fell in the early morning hours while he was getting dressed.
- Embers began burning in the east, casting light upon the land in the early winter hours.
- Two days later a relative left in the very early hours of the morning, to avoid the heat, with the coffin in the back of a buckie.
1.2The distance travelled in one hour: Ocean City is less than an hour away...
- We travelled one hour up the Pearl River by high-speed jet boats to the port of Zhongshan.
- They'd traveled about an hour away from Kol when Beau materialized out of the tree.
- They traveled a few hours down the road and found the horses that Arnon was talking about.
2A time of day specified as an exact number of hours from midnight or midday: the clock in the sitting room struck the hour...
- Come to me later in the evening in the seventh hour after midday, and I will give the prescription to you.
- Ask yourself, why did India awake to light and freedom at the stroke of the midnight hour…
- I left Dublin after the midnight hour and rolled west along the road, all too well aware that part of my link with the old city had come to an end.
2.1 (hours) [with preceding numeral] A time so specified on the twenty-four-hour clock: the first bomb fell at 0051 hours...
- Visa applications can be submitted from Monday to Friday from 08:00 hours to 12:00 hours and from 13:00 to 16:00 hours.
- The monthly charge covers scheduled servicing carried out between 08:00 to 18:00 hours Monday to Friday.
2.2The time as formerly reckoned from sunrise: it was about the ninth hour...
- Birds arrived between the end of the third hour after sunset and sunrise.
- And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.
- Unfortunately towards the end of the race during the ninth hour, we had to make a pit stop because we have a technical problem with the engine starter.
3A fixed period of time for an activity, such as work, use of a building, etc. the dinner hour licensing hours opening hours...
- The restrictions on drinking establishments and licensing hours date from this period.
- He is more impressed with the proposal to do away with fixed pub hours, planned for both Scotland and England.
- Both the boys followed them, saying it was too dangerous to walk around the school building after school hours.
3.1A particular point in time: I wondered if my last hour had come you can’t turn him away at this hour...
- The baby chooses the hour and minute of birth, the parents the year and month, and the place.
- The night went on without a hitch, but an hour had past, twelve midnight, the bewitching hour.
- Then, at the midnight hour of the request to extradite him, only THEN did they offer to hand him over to the Pakistan courts.
4 (hours) (In the Western (Latin) Church) a short service of psalms and prayers to be said at a particular time of day, especially in religious communities: an organized life of prayer including the canonical hours...
- The Liturgy of the Hours is centered on chanting or recitation of the Psalms, using fixed melodic formulas known as psalm tones.
- The Hours correspond to the Old Testament services beginning each of the four "watches" of the day.
5 Astronomy 15° of longitude or right ascension (one twenty-fourth part of a circle).Any object on the same hour circle will have the same right ascension, just as any place on earth on the same meridian of longitude has the same longitude....
- If the right ascension of objects transiting the meridian is 12 hours, then an object rising at the same time due east has a right ascension of 18 hours and an object setting due west has a right ascension of 6 hours.
Phrases
all hours
keep late (or regular) hours
on the hour
out of hours
within the hour
Origin
Middle English: from Anglo-Norman French ure, via Latin from Greek hōra 'season, hour'.
Hours came into English from French, and goes back to Greek hōra ‘season, hour’. year is a distant relation. The Old English equivalent was tide. The eleventh hour, meaning ‘the latest possible moment’, comes from the parable of the labourers in the Gospel of Matthew, in which someone pays people he hired at the beginning of the day the same daily rate as those he hired at the last or eleventh hour. The phrase their finest hour was part of Winston Churchill's speech in the House of Commons on 18 June 1940, before the Battle of Britain began: ‘Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”