Etymologically
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hour

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Pronunciation

  • IPA: UK /aʊə/, US /aʊr/[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English hour (earlier ure, our),[2][3] borrowed from Anglo-Norman ure and ore (“canonical hour; one-twelfth of a day”) (also hore, modern heure),[2][4][5] from Latin hōra (“hour, time, season”),[2][4][6] from Ancient Greek ὥρα (hṓra, “season, time of day, hour”).[2][4][5] Etymonline traces the Greek word to Proto-Indo-European *yer- (“year, season”), the source of year.[4][6][7] It replaced Old English tīd (“time”) and stund.[4][7] The h- has been kept in spelling though it has not been pronounced since Roman times.[4][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Probably before 1200, ure, in the Ancrene Riwle;[2] Etymonline's first sense, from about 1200, is the divine office said at each of the seven canonical hours.[4]

Semantic evolution

The time of day appointed for prayer, one of the canonical hours, is from about 1300, and Etymonline notes that the Church sense is the oldest in English.[4] A space of sixty minutes, one twenty-fourth of a day, is from about 1250 in the OED[8] or the late 14th century in Etymonline, which also notes the unequal hours, a twelfth of the daylight or of the night, varying with the season.[4] In the Middle Ages the planets were held to rule over the unequal hours.[4] The time of a particular event, as in the hour of death, is from the mid-14th century.[4] The number of hours since midnight, as in at ten hours, is from 1427.[8] Hours, fixed times of work or duty, are from 1852.[8] Hourglass is from about 1515.[2] The eleventh hour comes from the parable of the labourers in Matthew's Gospel.[7]

Timeline

  • before 1200 – ure (Ancrene Riwle).[2]
  • c. 1250 – sixty minutes.[8]
  • c. 1300 – a canonical hour.[4]
  • mid-14th century – the time of an event.[4]
  • 1427 – hours since midnight.[8]
  • c. 1515 – hourglass.[2]
  • 1852 – working hours.[8]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. One of the 24 equal parts of a day; sixty minutes.
  2. The time of day shown by a clock: at what hour.
  3. A particular time or period: the hour of need.
  4. (hours) Set times for work or business.
  5. The distance that can be covered in an hour.
  6. (hours) The canonical hours, or the prayers said at them.

Word family

  • hourless

References

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  3. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  5. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  7. ^ a b c Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  8. ^ a b c d e f Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press