"o'clock"

Post Reply New Topic

I've read that "o'clock" is a contraction of "of the clock". Shouldn't it be "on the clock"? That makes more sense.

It does seem to make more sense at first glance; but only if you think of clocks as they are now. The earliest public clocks only had chimes for the hours, because that was all that was needed to indicate the hours of prayer for the monks who mostly used them at first, so there was very often no clock face for the time to be "on". That long ago, there was also a distinction to be made between different ways of telling the time (e.g. clock or sundial), and even whether you used twelve equal-size hours or divided the changing length of time from sunrise to sunset into twelve hours. So it's quite possible that the contraction was originally from something like "chimes of the clock" or "hours of the clock".

Well, if you "read off the book" you don't say "read on the book" you say "read off the book". Yet, at the same time, if you say "it is written on the book" then yes you use "on".

So similarly you "read OFF the clock" or it is "shown ON the clock". So could be either one.

And by the way, who forces you to say that o'clock means "off" rather than "on"? Both words start from letter "o". So maybe they purposely left it as "o" to give you freedom to interpret it either way?

I had never considered that clocks and sundials would have overlapped in usage. Of course, when you think about it.

Linguistics may also offer a clue. In the dialects of Northern England, which are closer to older forms of English than most, the "o'" contraction for "of the" (not just "of" on its own) is still common in everyday speech. For example, in my Yorkshire dialect, we most often contract "the" to a glottal stop whatever the word before it is, running the previous word into it. For example (the apostrophes represent the glottal stops)...

Top o'hill (top of the hill).

I got on'bus (I got on the bus).

I got off o'bus (I got off [of] the bus).

As far as I can think, only "of" ever loses its end consonant before the missing "the" - never "on" or "off". I can't think of any other stock phrases with the "o'" contraction where the "o" isn't from the word "of", either. It's not impossible that "o'clock" is a unique case, but it would be a very unusual one if it is.

All this talk over something so trivial. And I thought I had too much time on my hands. No pun intended!

I can't speak for OP, but in my case I have no friends (due to Asperger) so I desperately try to fill my need for attention by posting online. Since OP (presumably) has Asperger too, I am guessing it might have been something similar.

"Off" has nothing to do with it.

It's "of". "Twelve OF the clock".

For most of history folks couldn't read (books, or clock faces). And for most of history most folks didn't give a crap about the time of day. You rose with the sun and did your farm work, and then you slept when the sun went down. You are on nature's time. Not on clock time.

So in the rare moments you did converse about "what time it is" you couldn't just say "it's 12" (twelve of WHAT? 12 coins for a hog? WTF?)., you had to say "twelve of the clock".

Pretty simple.

Like Trog said, only monks cared about the time of day in precise hours in the middle ages. Sailors began to use watches to help navigate in the late 1700s. And then about that time the industrial revolution also began- and led to the urbanization of the 19th century, and the obsession with clock time that goes with urban life and factory work. So it wasn't until the 19th century that the bulk of the human race became subservient to the dictates of their time pieces. And by that time the expression had gotten shorten to "OClock".

It wasn't until the American Civil War that militaries could make coordinated attacks by far apart units. Before that they didn't even have precise enough clocks to synchronize by.

In fact in Napleon's time they couldn't even get on the same calender. Russia and Britain planned a big battle to jointly kick Napoleon's ass, but neither ally realized that the other was using a different calender. So the Russian army showed up for the battle on the appointed day, and ...where are our British allies?????