hour

noun

\ ˈau̇(-ə)r

Definition of hour

1 : a time or office for daily liturgical devotion especially : canonical hour

2 : the 24th part of a day : 60 minutes

3a : the time of day reckoned in two 12-hour periods

b hours plural : the time reckoned in one 24-hour period from midnight to midnight using a 4-digit number of which the first two digits indicate the hour and the last two digits indicate the minute in the military 4:30 p.m. is called 1630 hours

4a : a customary or particular time lunch hour in our hour of need also : moment sense 1b hero of the hour

b hours plural : time of going to bed keeps late hours also : time of working banker's hours

5 : an angular unit of right ascension equal to 15 degrees measured along the celestial equator

6 : the work done or distance traveled at normal rate in an hour the city was two hours away

7a : a class session

b : credit hour, semester hour

after hours

: after the regular quitting or closing time

Examples of hour in a Sentence

She wasn't supposed to eat for six hours before the operation. You'll be paid by the hour for this job. The job pays ten dollars an hour. She exercises for a full hour every day. She was half an hour late. They arrived a few hours later. The project required long hours of work. The mood changed from hour to hour. These animals are most active in the hour just before sunrise. You can call me at any hour of the day or night.

Recent Examples on the Web

Related As the pilots of that plane were grappling with the stall-prevention system, the plane plummeted some 5,000 feet in 20 seconds and hit the ground at more than 310 miles per hour, according to another person familiar with the investigation. — Andrew Tangel, WSJ, "Pilots Take Aim at Instructions for Boeing 737 MAX," 3 Apr. 2019 The tektites would have been nearly falling from space, falling down to Earth at terminal velocities between 100 and 200 miles per hour, the scientists estimate. — David Grossman, Popular Mechanics, "The Annihilation Event That Killed The Dinosaurs Left This Diverse Graveyard Trapped in Time," 1 Apr. 2019 Kate earned just $75/day for her trouble and worked from 7 a.m. until at least 6 p.m. That means that, during a typical 11-hour day on the boat, Kate was earning roughly $6.81 per hour. — Kayleigh Roberts, Marie Claire, "Kate Middleton Had a Job Working as a Deckhand for $6.81 an Hour," 31 Mar. 2019 Advertising Metro charges around $163 per hour to operate Sound Transit routes 540, 541, 542 and 545. — Mike Lindblom, The Seattle Times, "Sound Transit puts bus outsourcing on hold," 25 Mar. 2019 Sensing irritation in your nasal passages, your body releases special brain-signaling chemicals that then trigger a convulsive expulsion of air out of the nose and mouth at more than 30 miles per hour. — Caroline Picard, Good Housekeeping, "It’s 2019: How Are People Still Not Sneezing the Right Way?!?," 8 Feb. 2019 If the labor rate is $25 per hour, then the install would cost $125. — Taysha Murtaugh, Country Living, "Butcher-Block Countertops: Pros, Cons, and Everything Else You Should Know," 15 Jan. 2019 In the rebooted testing program, Uber's cars are restricted to a top speed of 25 miles per hour and only drive a one-mile loop between two of the company's offices. — Timothy B. Lee, Ars Technica, "The hype around driverless cars came crashing down in 2018," 30 Dec. 2018 The spacecraft is currently traveling through space at 32,000 miles per hour. — Loren Grush, The Verge, "On New Year’s Day, a spacecraft will zoom by the most distant object humanity has ever visited," 27 Dec. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'hour.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.