Where does the term "o'clock" come from? As in 10 o'clock.?
967157
As has been noted, "o'clock" is short for "of the clock" meaning "according to the clock".  The fuller form of the expression is found as early as the late 14th century (in Chaucer).\nhttp://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19970102\n\nBut we can perhaps go a bit further, to the origins of the mechanical clock itself and the very word "clock".  "Clock" comes from Latin 'cloca' meaning "BELL".  It was the term applied to the newer devices in use for measuring time in the thirteenth century.   As the word itself suggests, the key feature of these clocks is the bell that chimed the hours  In fact, these clocks, often set out in public in a tower to make it possible to notify everyone, did not necessarily have hands.       The key thing, then, was notifying people of the HOUR of the day (not the minute, and not, at least at first, the quarter or half hour either).  This practice of marking/announcing the hours is echoed by the watchman's call "nine o'clock and all is well."     Thus it is scarcely surprising that this way of expressing the time did not (and still does not, except in certain highly formal uses) state anything BUT the HOUR.\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock#A_new_mechanism\n\nSo you may picture the situation around 1300 -- the bell in the 'clock tower' strikes ONE time announcing that the hour is "one of ['according to'] the clock".
420939
A time zone is a region of the Earth that has adopted the same standard time, usually referred to as the local time. Most time zones are exactly one hour apart, and by convention compute their local time as an offest from Greenwich Mean Time.\n\nStandard time zones can be defined by geometrically subdividing the Earth's spheroid into 24 lunes (wedge-shaped sections), bordered by meridians each 15° of longitude apart. The local time in neighbouring zones is then exactly one hour different. However, political and geographical practicalities can result in irregularly-shaped zones that follow political boundaries or that change their time seasonally (as with daylight saving time), as well as being subject to occasional redefinition as political conditions change.\n\nThere are different definitions of time zone which generally fall into two meanings: a time zone can represent a region where the local time is some fixed offset from a global reference (usually UTC), or a time zone can represent a region throughout which the local time is always consistent even though the offset may fluctuate seasonally.\n\nGreenwich Mean Time (GMT) was established in 1675 as an aid to determine longitude at sea by mariners. The first time zone in the world was established by British railways on December 1, 1847 — with GMT hand-carried on chronometers. About August 23, 1852, time signals were first transmitted by telegraph from the Royal Greenwich Observatory. Even though 98% of Great Britain's public clocks were using GMT by 1855, it was not made Britain's legal time until August 2, 1880. Some old clocks from this period have two minute hands — one for the local time, one for GMT [1]. This only applied to the island of Great Britain, and not to the island of Ireland.\n\nOn November 2, 1868, New Zealand (then a British colony) officially adopted a standard time to be observed throughout the colony, and was perhaps the first country to do so. It was based on the longitude 172° 30' East of Greenwich, that is 11 hours 30 minutes ahead of GMT. This standard was known as New Zealand Mean Time.\n\nTimekeeping on the American railroads in the mid nineteenth century was somewhat confused. Each railroad used its own standard time, usually based on the local time of its headquarters or most important terminus, and the railroad's train schedules were published using its own time. Some major railroad junctions served by several different railroads had a separate clock for each railroad, each showing a different time. The Pittsburgh main station used six different times! The confusion for travellers making a long journey involving several changes of train can be imagined
1022410
To explain "Zulu" time, we must explain "Z time," which was developed by Nathaniel Bowditch, an 18th century sea captain and author of "The American Practical Navigator," still considered an essential textbook on sea navigation.  In the course of developing a system by which naval navigators could record events in the local time wherever they were, Bowditch realized that since there are 24 hours in a day and 360 degrees around the earth, each 15 degrees change in longitude represented an hour's difference in local time.  Thus was the notion of time zones born, and Bowditch designated them with letters, marching East from Greenwich, through the International Date Line (180 degrees longitude), and back to England as he neared the end of the alphabet.  It's a bit more complicated than I can explain here (among other things, the International Date Line zone got two separate letter designators, and Bowditch skipped the letter "J" for some reason), but Greenwich itself ended up being designated the center of the "Z" zone.  Voila, Greenwich Mean Time became "Z time," and sailors have referred to it as such ever since.  You can read a far more complete account of Bowditch and "Z time" at http://www.maybeck.com/ztime.\n\nFrom "Z time" to "zulu" is a much simpler jump.  "Zulu" is simply the letter "Z" rendered in the NATO phonetic alphabet used by the military and air traffic controllers ("Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot," etc.) for clarity in radio transmissions.
659478
I think he meant to ask why a day is divided into 24 and not 36 or 48. The actual time would be the same but there would be short intervals. A half hour would end up being an hour. Why divide a circle into 360 or an hour into 60. \n\nHour :- "a traditional unit of time, equal to 60 minutes, or 3600 seconds, or 1/24 day. The custom of dividing the daylight into 12 hours goes back at least as far as the Babylonians, who liked to divide units by 12 because groups of 12 are easily divided into halves, thirds, or fourths. Originally an hour was 1/12 of the time between sunrise and sunset, so summer hours were longer than winter hours. Later, when people wanted to express times at night, it was natural to divide the night into 12 hours as well, making 24 hours in the day. Only after the invention of mechanical clocks, around 1300, did hours became equal intervals marked by clocks. The word comes from an ancient Greek word hora which originally meant a season, especially a religious season, and hence a "defined" period of time. In the Christian church hora came to mean one of the services held at seven specific times during the day, thus establishing the word as marking subdivisions of the day."
618549
10:10 is known as the time of perfection.\n\nThe reason is that Pele, The worlds greatest footballer had no.10 printed on his shirt so all watch companies keep 10:10 as the time.
634373
I think he meant to ask why a day is divided into 24 and not 36 or 48.  The actual time would be the same but there would be short intervals.  A half hour would end up being an hour.  Why divide a circle into 360 or an hour into 60.  \n\nHour :- "a traditional unit of time, equal to 60 minutes, or 3600 seconds, or 1/24 day. The custom of dividing the daylight into 12 hours goes back at least as far as the Babylonians, who liked to divide units by 12 because groups of 12 are easily divided into halves, thirds, or fourths. Originally an hour was 1/12 of the time between sunrise and sunset, so summer hours were longer than winter hours. Later, when people wanted to express times at night, it was natural to divide the night into 12 hours as well, making 24 hours in the day. Only after the invention of mechanical clocks, around 1300, did hours became equal intervals marked by clocks. The word comes from an ancient Greek word hora which originally meant a season, especially a religious season, and hence a "defined" period of time. In the Christian church hora came to mean one of the services held at seven specific times during the day, thus establishing the word as marking subdivisions of the day." \n\n\nhttp://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/58460.html
729925
Hmm, what's this strange word o'clock?  The OED has this to say about its usage and origin:\n\n    (The hour of the day is expressed by a cardinal numeral, followed by a phrase which was originally  a. of the clock, now only retained in formal phraseology; shortened subsequently to  †b. of clock,  †c. a clock (see A prep.2),  d. o'clock, the current modern form; rarer obs. variants were †e. at the clock, and clock simply.)\n\nOf the clock strikes me as pretty similar to on the clock.  Does Deford disapprove of the use of o'clock in (2)?  Given that (1) means unambiguously the same thing, o'clock is redundant in that context in a way that on the clock isn't in the sports context, but people still say it all the time.  Would he try to stamp out this pernicious usage if he ruled the world instead of merely sports?  Fortunately, we'll never find out, because he's not the boss of us.
160944
It does reference the time of day.  \n\nIt's very early in the morning ("Waiting for the break of day", "Wanting to just stay awake", "Feeling like I ought to sleep"), the dude is trippin' on drugs ("flashing lights against the sky", "spinning room is sinking deep") and deciding if he should do some more drugs ("Wondering how much I can take, Should I try to do some more").  \n\nThe time on the clock is about 3:35 or 3:34 .. or, 25 or 26 minutes to 4 o'clock in the morning.  He shortens the '26' to just 6 ..\n\nso 25 or 6 to 4
841849
It is called (My) Grandfather's Clock.  Here is a link to the lyrics.  http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/grandfather.htm
157240
I used to be a server and we used to say that all the time but I had no idea where it came from.  So...  I tried to find some info and this is a website I found.  I hope it answers your questions.  I found it interesting.  \n\nhttp://www.dinermuseum.org/culture/culture-slang.php
696856
Times written in military time (24 hour format) are four digits, such as, 1830Z (6:30 pm) with the Zulu suffix. Note that the phonetic alphabet is used for the letter Z (Zulu). This time is usually referred to as Zulu Time because of the letter assigned to this time zone. \n\nIts official name is Coordinated Universal Time or UTC. This time zone had previously been called Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) but was replaced with UTC in 1972 as the official world time standard changed. While GMT is based on Earth's rotation and celestial measurements, UTC is a based on cesium-beam atomic clocks. The two clocks are rarely more than a second apart as leap seconds are applied to UTC.\n\nSo, Zulu Time is taken from Greenwich in London. On the West Coast of the US, we are 8 hours behind that time
713043
The word "noon" is derived from the Latin word for NINTH. It was originally 9 hours after sunrise, which was the hottest part of the day.\nThe Romans usually had their lunch & rest at 3pm & it was called Noon.\nAs the industrial world developed, noon became the expression for when people "downed tools" to eat. So, noon, became the middle hour of the day.
142218
<The 24-hour clock is a convention of time-keeping in which the day runs from midnight to midnight and is divided into 24 hours, numbered from 0 to 23 (and 24 in the day-ending midnight). This system is the most commonly used time notation in the world of today. The United States is the only industrialized country left in which a substantial fraction of the population is not yet accustomed to it. The 24-hour notation is in the US and Canada also referred to as military time, and (now only rarely) in the United Kingdom as continental time. It is also the international standard notation of time (ISO 8601).\n\n<Description\nA time in the 24-hour notation is written in the form hours:minutes (for example, 01:23), or hours:minutes:seconds (01:23:45). A leading zero is added for numbers under 10. This zero is optional for the hours, but very commonly used, especially in computer applications, where many specifications require it (for example, ISO 8601). Where subsecond resolution is required, the seconds can be a decimal fraction, that is the fractional part follows a decimal dot or comma, as in 01:23:45.678. In the 24-hour time notation, the day begins at midnight, 00:00, and the last minute of the day is that beginning at 23:59 and ending at 24:00. The time 24:00 of the current day is identical to 00:00 of the following day. Digital clocks run from 00:00 to 23:59, that is they never show 24:00 on their display. This way, the roll-over from 23:59:59.999 to 00:00:00.000 coincides with the start of a new day and date. However, the notation 24:00 is useful for referring to the exact end of a day in a time interval.\n\n24-hour clock 12-hour clock \n00:00 12:00 midnight \n01:00 1:00 am \n02:00 2:00 am \n03:00 3:00 am \n04:00 4:00 am \n05:00 5:00 am \n06:00 6:00 am \n07:00 7:00 am \n08:00 8:00 am \n09:00 9:00 am \n10:00 10:00 am \n11:00 11:00 am \n12:00 12:00 noon \n13:00 1:00 pm \n14:00 2:00 pm \n15:00 3:00 pm \n16:00 4:00 pm \n17:00 5:00 pm \n18:00 6:00 pm \n19:00 7:00 pm \n20:00 8:00 pm \n21:00 9:00 pm \n22:00 10:00 pm \n23:00 11:00 pm \n24:00 12:00 midnight
553895
Common urban legend, but quite untrue.\n\nThere is no unit of time called a "jiffy," no matter how many times you read it in forwarded e-mails.  \n\nThere are quasi-uses but nothing that's ever seriously used.  Check dictionary.com for a list of these.
349021
Because a 24 hour period is a day, it's simple to refer to the days of the week as Monday, Tuesday etc.  The first part of the name does have meaning of some sort, though I'm not sure what, I think some of this goes back to the Ancient Roman era.
470281
The History of Analog Clocks (SEE FIRST LINK BELOW) provides an explanation of the origin of the 24-hour day. The system dates back 4,000 years, to ancient Egypt and Babylon. \n\nEgyptian astronomers divided the night hours into 12 distinct sets of star patterns, which emerged over the horizon at roughly hour-long intervals. They divided the day into 12 hours to match, and because they lived near the equator, the days and nights were of roughly equal length throughout the year. \n\nThroughout the rest of the world, the 12 "hours" of the day and night were flexible depending upon the season. It wasn't until the 13th century A.D. that an Arab scientist named Abul-Hassan suggested the idea of clearly defined hours. \n\nIt's also worth noting that the number 12 is special in many cultures. For example, Egyptians counted in base 12. Dividing the day into two sets of 12 was a simple and elegant way of condensing the annual calendar into a day. \n\n*Repost*
916656
It didn't quite happen that way.\n\nPeople used the sun and sun dials for a long time before our current system of time. Then they started tracking night-time times with water-clocks and similar things.\n\nBut there weren't universally recognized time systems, or such things as our current standard hours and minutes.\n\nWhen clocks (as we know them) began to be made, there wasn't a universal, world-wide time setting.\n\nMonks created the first machines to measure time, to "sound" the time for their religious rituals. (They didn't have universal standards, but varied by place and religious order.)\n\nAround 1330 he got our standard hour.\n\nTowns started building clock towers to sound time for the town (people didn't have their own clocks yet), measuring time from noon to noon or maybe sunset to sunset (or maybe it varied) in 24 1-hour increments.\n\nMinutes came much later.\n\nI don't know when we started world-wide synchronization.