hora

Forms

hora f (plural horas)^[1] Old Spanish usually wrote ora, beside hora and the plural oras.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin hōra (“hour”), which was borrowed from Greek ὥρα (hṓra, “period of time, division of the day, hour”).^{[3][4][5][1][6]} The same Latin word is Portuguese hora, Catalan hora, French heure and Italian ora.^[7][8] In Latin it was the twelfth part of the day between sunrise and sunset, or of the night, so that its length changed with the season.^[6] Wiktionary traces the Greek word to Proto-Indo-European *yóh₁r̥ (“year, season”), the source of English year.^[1]

The adverb ahora goes back to Latin hac hora (“at this hour”), through Old Spanish agora.^[3][4] Latin illa hora (“at that hour”) survives in Old Spanish a la hora (“then”), like allora and alors.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word appears from the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) on: „en ti crovo al ora, por end es salvo de mal” “he believed in you at that hour, and so he is saved from harm”.^[9][3][4] In the Cid una grant ora means “a long while”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Beside the strict sense, one of the equal parts of the solar day, the word has always meant the time fixed for doing something (es hora de trabajar); general senses such as “a while” and “free time” were more common in the Middle Ages.^[3] Alfonso X's Lapidario already counts twenty-four hours in the day.^[10] Covarrubias in 1611 contrasted the equal common hours with the unequal planetary hours of the astrologers, and repeated Macrobius' fanciful derivation of the word from the Egyptian Horus, the Sun.^[11]

Grammaticalised, and now written ora, the word became the alternative conjunction ora... ora... “now... now...”, found from 1576;^[12] Berceo used the plural oras... oras... in the same way.^[3] Enhorabuena “congratulations” dates from about 1600 and enhoramala from 1605.^[4] A deshora meant “suddenly” until it was confused with the noun deshora “wrong time” and came to mean “at an untimely hour”; it was really a contraction of a de so hora.^[3][4] In Argentina and much of the Americas the question about the time is asked in the plural, ¿qué horas son?^[3][12] In the Canaries an hora de agua was a measure of irrigation water.^[13] In Bolivia hora alemana “German time” is a punctual hour for a meeting.^[12]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses ora.^[9][3][4]
• c. 1194–1211 – the Liber Regum says that Hezekiah uino ad ora de muert “came to the hour of death”.^[9]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario speaks of twenty-four hours.^[10]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary distinguishes the equal hour of the clock from the unequal hour.^[14]
• 1576 – first examples of the conjunction ora... ora....^[3]
• c. 1600 – first record of enhorabuena;^[11] enhoramala follows in 1605.^[4]
• 1611 – Covarrubias describes the twenty-four hours of the day.^[11]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades calls hora a purely Latin word.^[15]
• c. 1700 – first record of hora de agua, a measure of water in the Canaries.^[13]
• 1899 – the Academy's dictionary derives it from Latin hora.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. An hour: a period of sixty minutes: El viaje dura dos horas.^[5][1]
2. The right or fixed time for something: Ya es hora de irnos.^[5][1]
3. The last moments of life: llegarle a alguien su hora.^[5]
4. The exact time of day at which something happens; the time shown by a clock: ¿Qué hora es?^[5][1]
5. An indefinite moment or stretch of time.^[5]
6. (astronomy) Each of the 24 equal parts, of 15 degrees each, into which the equator is divided.^[5]
7. (rare) A distance of one legua.^[5]
8. (in the plural) An unexpected, unusual or inconvenient time: ¿A estas horas llamas?^[5]
9. (in the plural, dated) A book of hours, or the prayers in it.^[5]
10. (education) A class period.^[1]
11. (Spain, colloquial) An appointment, for instance with the doctor.^[1]

Word family

• ahora
• horario
• deshora
• enhorabuena
• enhoramala

Related words

• horóscopo
• Latin hora
• French heure

Usage notes

Hora is not used for “time” in general (tiempo), only for a point or stretch measured by the clock: ¿qué hora es? “what time is it?”.^[5][1] The conjunction ora... ora... is the same word, written without h.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. hora
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 387
4. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hora
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. hora
6. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. hora
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 3283
9. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. hora
10. ^ a b Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. hora
11. ^ a b c Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 991
12. ^ a b c Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. hora
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. hora
14. ^ Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. hora
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 175
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 535