hour

noun

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\ 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 Still, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, general warehousing in Tulsa County paid an average of about $11 an hour — lower than Amazon. — Washington Post, 1 June 2021 Participants were paid $40 an hour during the returnship and the salaries of the full-time positions that were offered after the eight-week program were $100,000 or above, according to Fernandes. — Kathryn Vasel, CNN, 1 June 2021 At its personnel peak, in 1979, the company had more than six hundred thousand employees in the U.S., most of whom were hourly workers making an average of around forty dollars an hour in today’s currency. — Nicholas Lemann, The New Yorker, 31 May 2021 He was followed by Leon Hunter, 24, who arrived in North Little Rock just an hour before first pitch, and the righty was pumping gas. — Mitchell Gladstone, Arkansas Online, 30 May 2021 Until early last year, on-street parking was 50 cents an hour. — Jenny Berg, Star Tribune, 29 May 2021 The six-episode docuseries traces the history of LGBTQ civil rights from the 1950s through the 2000s, with an hour devoted to each decade. — Judy Berman, Time, 28 May 2021 In Oregon, for example, the average UI payment is about $688 a week, equivalent to $17.20 an hour. — Tim Fernholz, Quartz, 27 May 2021 In Dallas County, a childless adult must make $15.98 an hour to cover basic expenses and save a little money for emergencies. — Dallas News, 27 May 2021

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.