Everyday LifeGreek → English
Hour
/ˈaʊər/noun
A period of sixty minutes, one twenty-fourth of a day.
The Greek roots
ὥρα
hṓra
season, right moment
Literally: “a fixed span of time”
Follow a root:ὥρα3 words
The story of the word
Greek ὥρα meant a season of the year, or the ripe moment for doing something, before it meant a slice of the day; the Ὧραι were goddesses of the seasons. Greeks and Romans then split daylight into twelve hours whatever the date, so a summer hour ran long and a winter hour short. The equal sixty-minute hour is a mechanical-clock idea. The h in the English spelling is Latin decoration, silent because English followed French pronunciation.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 13th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
horoscopehorologyhorologe
In a sentence
The train sat outside the station for an hour and nobody explained why.
She reads for an hour before the children wake.