transcription, транскрипция: [ aʊə(r) ]
( hours)
Frequency: The word is one of the 700 most common words in English.
1.
An hour is a period of sixty minutes.
They waited for about two hours...
I only slept about half an hour that night.
...a twenty-four hour strike...
N-COUNT
2.
People say that something takes or lasts hours to emphasize that it takes or lasts a very long time, or what seems like a very long time.
Getting there would take hours.
N-PLURAL [ emphasis ]
3.
A clock that strikes the hour strikes when it is exactly one o’clock, two o’clock, and so on.
N-SING : the N
4.
You can refer to a particular time or moment as a particular hour . ( LITERARY )
...the hour of his execution...
= time
N-SING : with supp
5.
If you refer, for example, to someone’s hour of need or hour of happiness, you are referring to the time in their life when they are or were experiencing that condition or feeling. ( LITERARY )
...the darkest hour of my professional life.
N-COUNT : with supp
6.
You can refer to the period of time during which something happens or operates each day as the hours during which it happens or operates.
...the hours of darkness...
Phone us on this number during office hours.
N-PLURAL : with supp
7.
If you refer to the hours involved in a job, you are talking about how long you spend each week doing it and when you do it.
I worked quite irregular hours...
N-PLURAL
8.
see eleventh hour
see lunch hour
see rush hour
9.
If you do something after hours , you do it outside normal business hours or the time when you are usually at work.
...a local restaurant where steel workers unwind after hours...
PHRASE : PHR after v , PHR n
see also after-hours
10.
If you say that something happens at all hours of the day or night, you disapprove of it happening at the time that it does or as often as it does.
She didn’t want her fourteen-year-old daughter coming home at all hours of the morning.
PHRASE : PHR after v [ disapproval ]
11.
If something happens in the early hours or in the small hours , it happens in the early morning after midnight.
Gibbs was arrested in the early hours of yesterday morning.
PHRASE
12.
If something happens on the hour , it happens every hour at, for example, nine o’clock, ten o’clock, and so on, and not at any number of minutes past an hour.
PHRASE : PHR after v
13.
Something that happens out of hours happens at a time that is not during the usual hours of business or work. ( mainly BRIT )
Teachers refused to run out of hours sports matches because they weren’t being paid.
PHRASE : PHR after v , PHR n