noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
24 hours a day (= during the whole day and night )
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In Cairo, the streets are busy 24 hours a day.
30 mile/360 kilometre/2 hour etc round trip
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A coachload of supporters made the 700-mile round trip to South Devon.
5 minutes/an hour/20 years etc ago
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Her husband died 14 years ago.
a 12-hour/16-hour etc shift
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We used to work eight-hour shifts.
a 12-hour/16-hour etc shift
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We used to work eight-hour shifts.
a 24-hour/2-day etc bug
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The doctor says it’s just a 24-hour bug.
a half hour/mile etc
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You can’t just waltz in a half hour late.
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It’s about a half mile down the road.
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a half day excursion to the island
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He demanded a half share of the money.
a quarter of an hour
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I’ll meet you in a quarter of an hour .
an hour’s/a two hour etc drive
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It’s a two hour drive from Calais to Thiepval.
antisocial hours
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I got fed up with the low pay and antisocial hours .
at an ungodly hour (= very early in the morning or very late at night )
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Why did you wake me up at such an ungodly hour?
be paid by the hour/day/week
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I was working on a building site, being paid by the hour.
business hours
cost sth per minute/hour/year etc
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Calls cost only 2p per minute.
daylight hours
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The park is open to the public during daylight hours .
earn £30,000 a year/$200 a week/£5 an hour etc
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Newly qualified teachers earn a minimum of £24,000 a year.
five hours/two weeks etc solid
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On Saturday I went to bed and slept fourteen hours solid.
five minutes/an hour etc fast
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I always keep my watch 15 minutes fast.
five minutes/two hours etc away
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The beach is only five minutes away it only takes five minutes to get there .
flexible working hours
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Many mothers prefer flexible working hours .
half a mile/pound/hour etc
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half a pound of butter
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It’s about half a mile down the road.
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She drank half a bottle of wine.
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half a million dollars
happy hour
hour hand
in the small hours of the morning (= very early, before dawn )
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I was woken up in the small hours of the morning by a strange sound.
inside the hour/month etc (= before an hour, month etc has passed )
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We’ll be back inside the hour.
irregular hours
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Funeral directors often work long, irregular hours .
kilowatt hour
last an hour/ten minutes etc
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Each lesson lasts an hour.
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The ceasefire didn’t last long.
lose time/2 days/3 hours etc
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Vital minutes were lost because the ambulance took half an hour to arrive.
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In 1978, 29 million days were lost in industrial action.
lunch hour
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I did the shopping during my lunch hour.
miles per hour
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He was driving at 70 miles per hour .
miles/kilometres per hour (= used for measuring speed )
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a speed limit of 40 miles per hour
opening hours
rush hour
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I got caught in the morning rush hour.
seconds/moments/minutes/hours
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We knew we only had a few more precious hours together.
seemed like hours
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We waited for what seemed like hours .
spare sb ten minutes/an hour etc
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Could you possibly spare me a few moments in private used to ask someone if they have time to quickly talk to you ?
strike the hour (= strike when it is exactly one o'clock, two o'clock etc )
ten minutes/two hours etc late
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The bus came ten minutes late.
ten minutes/two hours etc late
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You’re half an hour late.
the evening rush hour (= the busy time in the evening when a lot of people are travelling home from work )
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There's always congestion on the motorways during the evening rush hour.
the hours of darkness (= the night )
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Desert animals come out during the hours of darkness when its cool.
the lunch hour (= the time when people stop working to eat lunch )
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I try to go out for a walk during my lunch hour.
three quarters of an hour (= 45 minutes )
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She arrived three quarters of an hour late.
two hours/three days etc long
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The speech was twenty minutes long.
visiting hours
wait two hours/ten minutes etc
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William waited an hour for his sister to arrive.
witching hour
work long hours (= work for more time than is usual )
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Doctors often work long hours .
zero hour
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
early
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In the early hours of the morning, at about three, Stephen jerked awake from a nightmare.
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The outside bar provides drinks and snacks until the early hours of the morning.
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All that idleness; eating too much; drinking too much; going to bed in the early hours of the morning.
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The party continued well into the early hours and was heralded as a great success by all.
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Some time in the early hours they had reached Madeira.
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Most days, I worked into the early hours , leaving little time to spend with Joan.
happy
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Accompanied by our daughter, I spent many happy hours helping there.
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On Friday, happy hour starts at 3 p. m. and continues until closing.
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Peter O'Toole's happiest hour as the Soho scribe looking back on a mis-spent life.
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During happy hour , extended on Monday until the end of the game, microbrews are $ 2.
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The cover of this machine provided many happy hours for me when tiny.
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The happy hour food menu includes hot wings, chicken quesadillas, onion rings and crab cakes, among others.
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All in all, it promises to be a huge weekend with a happy hour and disco etal.
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Open 5 p.m.-2 a.m. every day except Monday. Happy hour from 5-8 p.m.
long
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Just long hours and low pay.
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The chorus sang plaintively of their long hours in the shop, and short nights in the attics above.
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Through the long slow hours of darkness he saw her lovely face and forgot that she did not love him.
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The long hours of the night stretched ahead of her and the prospect opened a well of loneliness within her.
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Amelie put in long hours , rising at five every morning and falling exhausted into bed well after midnight.
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During the decline of hand-loom weaving, more and more families were brought under the necessity of working longer hours .
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We spent long hours in stationary trains in railway-sidings, in grey towns under greyer skies.
rush
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Like traffic caught in rush hour , freeway construction moves glacially -- especially when well-organized locals try to spike it.
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Service is frequent, with trains running every 7 { minutes during rush hour and once every 30 minutes on Sundays.
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And already, the rush hour queues have begun to shrink.
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That concentration, greater than on a highway during rush hour , would not cause even a headache in most healthy people.
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By moving the start and finish times away from the traditional hours , the workforce could avoid rush hour travel.
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In rush hour , forget it.
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The Paris-Brussels trains will run every 30 minutes during rush hour .
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It was raining, getting dark, and it was rush hour besides.
small
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For who among us is too world-weary to be awake and watching until the small hours of Friday morning?
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David D. is always well briefed, usually good-humoured, though he was looking a little frayed by the small hours of Friday.
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Lying awake in the small hours , after falling asleep quickly, can become another maddening habit.
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It will be particularly useful for early risers who once had to endure deafening music from Benidorm bars until the small hours .
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Nutty lay awake in the small hours , worrying herself stupid.
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Clearly he saw nothing odd about business meetings in the small hours .
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In fact my whole being was permeated by the leaden-armed pervading weakness one feels when forced to work in the small hours .
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But he'd had that last night - or rather, in the small hours of the morning.
working
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Concurrently juniors' working hours are being reduced.
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Are there arrangements for surgeries or clinics out of working hours ?
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Similarly farmers are more prepared to be indulgent about their employees' working hours as long as the necessary tasks are carried out efficiently.
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Hundreds of thousands of working hours lost.
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More could be done to encourage flexible or staggered working hours and spread the traffic load.
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Employers could also help themselves and many of their staff by banning lunchtime drinking and all consumption of alcohol during working hours .
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The issue - over working hours and job security - remains unresolved.
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One teamleader would occasionally keep his dealers behind after normal working hours .
■ NOUN
half
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Mr Evans closed the shop for an extra half hour and brought out a bottle of sherry.
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The passenger wagons were not going into town for another half hour , so I hired a carriage and went in myself.
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She had been waiting in his office with growing impatience for a full half hour .
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A half hour at the latest.
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Robbie Fowler and, for the last half hour , Michael Owen, barely mustered a shot between them.
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I kept checking the bathroom mirror every half hour or so, certain my face was swelling on one side.
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It was a contented half hour .
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Already the first stars were out; in a half hour the darkness would be solid.
lunch
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It may be no more than a little park near work or a church that you stop by during lunch hour .
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During her lunch hour she shopped, deliberately avoiding the part of town in which Giles's office was situated.
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He had roamed Queenstown during his lunch hour at the beginning of the week before he could find a roaster for sale.
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The shop was closed for the lunch hour .
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He was back in the Home Office by the lunch hour .
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He runs five or six miles in Central Park during his lunch hour and showers at the gym.
office
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If you want to help contact during office hours .
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Compiling such a list was a labour of love - too pleasurable an activity to pursue in office hours .
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However although many employers grant day release facilities, most of your preparation for the examinations will take place outside office hours .
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This would involve staying behind after office hours to empty some bins and hoover around a bit.
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Training on word processing is useful to edit precedents, alter work outside office hours and to type confidential memos.
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During office hours the main door of Moorlake House was always left on the latch.
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She wanted to touch him, but continued to observe the rules that kept them apart during office hours .
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Just ring: This facility is available during office hours Monday to Friday.
■ VERB
last
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Helpers approaching have sometimes been bitten or attacked wildly in the delirium that follows and which may last as long as twelve tormented hours .
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Rush hour lasts half an hour, and bicycles remain a realistic form of transportation.
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The row lasted half an hour , then the last protesters left the auditorium, noisily banging doors behind them.
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Bombings sometimes lasted an hour or more.
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Over 100 interviews were carried out, lasting some 170 hours in all, as well as several shorter, informal conversations.
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Then, the evening emergence lasts half an hour .
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The visit lasted over an hour during which time Neil Kinnock experienced at first hand what carpet manufacturing was all about.
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There was the heaviest raid so far, lasting four hours .
spend
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She spends hours looking after her nails.
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Miles began to gleefully spend an hour each afternoon sitting among his books.
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Together with his wife Lilian, the Group quality circle facilitator spends hours of his spare time counting cross-stitching.
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They spent an hour in my closet, cutting tiny swatches from the seams.
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Helen got away for one day and they spent nine hours together in the open air.
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We spend half an hour at Crown Bookstore.
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So maybe they only spend ten hours , instead of three hundred hours spent by the Red Arrows.
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I spend a half hour at a hologram store.
take
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It starts with a potent aperitif called Mulsum which takes twenty four hours to mature.
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Once it had taken ten hours to turn a particular cannon projectile; now it took an hour and a half.
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It seemed to Elizabeth that it took people half an hour to greet each other each day.
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Both geometric correction and image registration involve lengthy and time-consuming operations, taking several hours on a minicomputer.
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Lessons took up only two hours a day and the farm work was badly organised.
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It takes about one hour for the alcohol from a drink to reach its peak concentration in the blood.
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They take eighteen hours all told, including the overnight soaking.
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A journey from London to Kendal can take less than 4.5 hours .
wait
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From Buffalo, the party drove three miles to Black Rock on the Niagara where they waited an hour for a ferryman.
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He waited an hour , quite immobile.
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Huge crowds were waiting an hour in the cold before the service was scheduled to begin.
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I had some experience of this when I lived at home, having to wait hours for the district nurses.
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Lives might have been saved if he had not waited about two hours before reporting the crash in April last year.
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After hostage negotiators heard the gunshot over the phone, police waited about a half hour before entering the home.
work
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Women fare little better, working an average 40.1 hours here, compared to the Euro average of 38.9 hours.
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Shaffer works 12-hour days, six days a week.
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He worked all hours , day and night, and in all weathers.
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In the last few weeks he had been working sixteen-and twenty-hour days.
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For workers in small firms employment guarantees are very rare, working hours are longer and safety records poor.
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When you work long hours with people, bonds are inevitably formed.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a civilized hour
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Can't we have the meeting at a more civilized hour?
a matter of seconds/weeks/hours etc
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Already we read that within a matter of weeks the number of the believers was 120.
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At least 30 rounds went off in a matter of seconds.
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But these days, the time between orders and shipments has shrunk to a matter of weeks.
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Hay says that Sarin would normally degrade in an open environment in a matter of hours.
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It seemed to the rector that it all happened within a matter of seconds.
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Many other soy sauces are chemically produced in a matter of hours.
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More to the point, he prevailed on Amelia to write the text in a matter of weeks.
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The new cabinet and other ministerial appointments are announced within a matter of days, sometimes within a matter of hours.
a year/a week/a moment/an hour etc or two
be counting (down) the minutes/hours/days
call it £10/two hours etc
in your hour of need
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He helped others in their hour of need .
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Besides, how could he abandon his father now, in his hour of need ?
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Is there anyone, anyone at all, to whom he might go in his hour of need ?
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Right-wing columnists are refusing to rally to Mr Major in his hour of need .
kill time/an hour etc
office hours
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Call me back tomorrow during office hours.
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Professor Lee's office hours are from 2 to 4 on Mondays and Thursdays.
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A thousand and one domestic crises can intrude on your office hours if your office is in your home.
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Box office hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
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Compiling such a list was a labour of love - too pleasurable an activity to pursue in office hours.
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During my office hours that day, I lay my head in the crook of my elbow and close my eyes.
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However although many employers grant day release facilities, most of your preparation for the examinations will take place outside office hours.
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I, too, went to take a bath or ran errands during office hours, as did my colleagues.
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If you want to help contact during office hours.
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This would involve staying behind after office hours to empty some bins and hoover around a bit.
per hour/day/week etc
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A group of mums working on a one day per week rota can look after the arrangements for this.
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Action potentials zip down axons at about 225 miles per hour.
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At room temperature, atoms normally fly around at speeds of hundreds or thousands of miles per hour.
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Make a conscious effort to drink less tea and coffee - about one or two cups per day.
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Pony treks from the East Farm are priced at £8 per hour, 7 days a week.
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Prices vary enormously for group holidays but a typical price would be somewhere in the region of £25 per person per day.
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Singe bikes cost $ 3. 50 per hour, tandems $ 5 per hour.
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These couples averaged 2.44 copulations per week.
sb's finest hour
spare time/moment/hour etc
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Darby was a cheerfully relaxed young man who compiled cryptic crosswords for a monthly magazine in his spare time.
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In her spare time she makes and decorates cakes of different shapes and sizes for all occasions.
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In his spare time, Grigsby gave legal advice to the Black Panthers.
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In many schools, teachers are spending their spare time fund-raising and making equipment to support the new Curriculum.
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Q: What do you do in your spare time?
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Q: When you have spare time, what do you do?
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We had some spare time, so we started messing around with samples and sequencers and stuff.
the early hours
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Order was restored in the prison in the early hours of June 25th.
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The club didn't close till the early hours.
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They reached San Francisco in the early hours of the morning.
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He died in the early hours of this morning.
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House fire: Firefighters were called to a house blaze in Sedgefield in the early hours of Saturday morning.
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Return will be on Sunday, 2 May, late evening or in the early hours of Monday morning.
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Tension mounted in the early hours of yesterday morning when a shot was heard in the area of the siege house.
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The ideal time at which to make an arrest is in the early hours of the morning.
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The tail-end of a conversation in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
the eleventh hour
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Alas, this knowledge comes at a time when it is virtually the eleventh hour for the tiger.
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And, suddenly, just as had happened to Michael Banks, at the eleventh hour the rhythm started to come.
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At the eleventh hour, Halifax has stepped into the breach.
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At the eleventh hour, he underestimated the Stealers - as if they had only been his playthings.
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At the eleventh hour, the Government decided something had to be done, and fast.
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It has come at the eleventh hour.
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The Billabong had been saved at the eleventh hour.
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There wouldn't be any later, unless somehow, at the eleventh hour, I freed Karen from her sterile remorse.
the evil hour/day etc
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Putting off the evil hour, she suspected.
the man of the moment/hour/year
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Back in 1831 the man of the moment was one Squire George Osbaldeston.
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Except for one player, the man of the moment in the Kingdome.
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Miltiades was the man of the hour, and his advice was to strike at once and win back the Cyclades.
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Sean Bean's the man of the moment.
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That's what makes Bush the man of the hour, for these are indisputably good times.
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You ought to be the man of the hour.
the small hours
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We danced until the small hours.
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A month ago he went into Edinburgh for a night out and in the small hours was stabbed to death.
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But private investors reacted quickly by buying equities in the small hours of yesterday morning.
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By night the bar is transformed into a disco, playing night-club sounds' til the small hours.
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Finally it was Trondur in the small hours of the morning who succeeded.
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In fact my whole being was permeated by the leaden-armed pervading weakness one feels when forced to work in the small hours.
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Nutty lay awake in the small hours, worrying herself stupid.
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The uneasy silence of the small hours fell over the hospital.
the wee (small) hours
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The recording session extended into the wee hours.
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An ideal adventure for beginners, this one should have you plugging away till the wee small hours of the morning.
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For safety, a night light comes on at the top of the stairs when some one emerges in the wee hours.
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Soul musicians are, by nature, nocturnal, so many of his interviews would take place in the wee hours.
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Their video-age medicine shows run on dozens of cable and broadcast outlets in the wee hours.
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We got to Sabinal in the wee hours before dawn.
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Where else can such a thought be debated ad nauseam into the wee hours of a boring Tuesday?
the witching hour
twenty-four hour clock
unearthly hour/time etc
waking hours/life/day etc
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Every second of his waking hours, he was watched.
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He inhales desert lore and data all his waking hours.
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Indeed we sometimes spend a lot of our waking hours making sure that everything is as secure as we can make it.
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Real will is an attribute of consciousness, not of the sleep in which most people pass their waking lives.
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She still wanted to look as she did in waking life, but there were improvements she could make.
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Some people wrestle with their problems until the very last minutes of their waking hours.
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The documentation that he signed said, observe this resident one on one during waking hours.
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We were young and our waking hours were given to games.
while away the hours/evening/days etc
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Let's while away the hours swapping stories.
work unsocial hours
working hours/day/week
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Apparently, too, Rosie enjoyed herself after working hours.
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At the end of the working day most of us retreat to families and/or partners and play other parts.
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Items must be posted at post office counters in advance of latest recommended posting times for next working day delivery.
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Remember, your spouse may not be used to having you home during working hours.
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The whole operation was based on 50 journeys or rounds, one for each vehicle on every working day of the week.
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These, as we now know, involve everything from environmental considerations to limits on the working hours of employees.
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They had only three working days in which to prepare the defence against the new charge.
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They took long lunches and went to barbershops, beauty parlors, bathhouses, and tearooms during working hours.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
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I hate telemarketers who call during the dinner hour
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Sir, I'm sorry to bother you at this hour .
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There's something happening on our street at all hours of the day and night.
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We had to get up at some ungodly hour to catch our train.
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We serve meals 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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A pea-sized projectile is hurtled into a target at speeds of up to sixteen thousand miles an hour .
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After we had sat talking for half an hour he asked permission to be excused.
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For the hour before getting ready she was reminded in ways she would be able to understand in terms of time.
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I anticipate that his direct examination will require at least an hour .
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It seemed to Elizabeth that it took people half an hour to greet each other each day.
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Normally the others would remain for another hour or so.
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The busiest time and peak hours of the reception office will depend on the type of hotel.
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This gives you the cost of an hour of your labor.