hour

noun
/aʊə/UK/aː(ɹ)//aʊɚ/CA

Etymology

From Middle English houre, hour, oure, from Old French houre, from Latin hōra (“hour”), from Ancient Greek ὥρα (hṓra, “any time or period, whether of the year, month, or day”), from Proto-Indo-European *yóh₁r̥ (“year, season”). Akin to Old English ġēar (“year”). Doublet of hora and year. Compare horary. Partly displaced native Old English tīd (“time, hour”), whence Modern English tide.

  1. derived from *yóh₁r̥
  2. derived from ὥρα
  3. derived from hōra
  4. derived from houre
  5. inherited from houre

Definitions

  1. A unit of time of one twenty-fourth of a day (sixty minutes).

    • Meronyms: quectosecond < rontosecond < yoctosecond < zeptosecond < attosecond < femtosecond < picosecond < nanosecond < microsecond < millisecond < centisecond < decisecond < second < decasecond < minute < hectosecond < kilosecond
    • Near-synonym: microcentury (humorous approximation)
  2. A season, moment, or time.

    • Don't come home ever again at this unearthly hour.
    • From childhood's hour I have not been / As others were; I have not seen / As others saw; I could not bring / My passions from a common spring.
    • Now will be a good hour to show you Milly Erne's grave.
  3. The time.

    • The hour grows late and I must go home.
  4. + 4 more definitions
    1. Used after a two-digit hour and a two-digit minute to indicate time.

      • By 1300 hours the position was fairly clear.
    2. The amount of labor demanded by an employer in terms of time.

      • I asked my manager for more hours.
      • The shop wasn't giving me enough hours so I started searching for a second job.
    3. The set times of prayer, the canonical hours, the offices or services prescribed for…

      The set times of prayer, the canonical hours, the offices or services prescribed for these, or a book containing them.

    4. A distance that can be traveled in one hour.

      • This place is an hour away from where I live.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at hour. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01hour02season03year04planet05night06evening07hours

A definitional loop anchored at hour. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

7 hops · closes at hour

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA