hour
Listen:Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
hour/ˈaʊə(r)/
▶noun
- 1 a period of time equal to a twenty-fourth part of a day and night and divided into 60 minutes.
- 2 a time of day specified as an exact number of hours from midnight or midday.
■ (hours) [with preceding numeral] a time so specified on the 24-hour clock.
- 3 a period of time for or marked by a specific activity: leisure hours.
■ a point in time: the shop is half-full even at this hour.
- 4 (hours) (in the Western (Latin) Church) a short service of psalms and prayers to be said at a particular time of day.
- 5 Astronomy 15° of longitude or right ascension (one twenty-fourth part of a circle).
– phrases
on the hour
on the hour
- 1 at an exact hour, or on each hour, of the day or night.
- 2 after a period of one hour.
– origin ME: from Anglo-Norman Fr. ure, via L. from Gk hōra ‘season, hour’.
'hour' also found in these Oxford entries:
bell
- circadian
- cuckoo clock
- curfew
- day
- drone
- eleventh
- false dawn
- fine
- first post
- forfeit
- from
- gph
- h
- half-hour
- happy hour
- H-hour
- horary
- hourglass
- hourly
- hr
- hundred
- kilowatt-hour
- km/h
- knot
- kWh
- last post
- lop
- lunch hour
- man-hour
- minute
- mph
- none
- noon
- o'clock
- of
- prime
- quarter
- quarter-hour
- ring
- rush hour
- second
- sext
- siesta
- summer time
- terce
- their
- to
- twenty-four-hour clock
