hour

noun

Simple meaning

The amount of labor demanded by an employer in terms of time.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

ower

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US device voice

IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈaʊɚ

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

chiefly in the plural
The amount of labor demanded by an employer in terms of time.
A season, moment, or time.
chiefly us
A distance that can be traveled in one hour.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty: A1 · Beginner
Frequency: Very Common
Typical Use: Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: The amount of labor demanded by an employer in terms of time.

Used this way, hour is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone: Neutral
Formality: Neutral
Intensity: Not strongly marked
How common: Moderately common
Connotation: Matter-of-fact
Usage feel: Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use hour

“The job will take more than an hour.”noun

Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

After / set

last hour

Period

half hourearly hour

Other combinations

eleventh hourhour dayfirst hourlate hourhour period

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

hoursnounPlural form
A period of time assigned for work.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

hourlyadverbDerived adverb
Every hour.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

hour circlenounCompound term
A great circle on the celestial sphere that passes through both celestial poles.
hour handnounCompound term
The shorter hand of a clock that points to the hours.
hour anglenounCompound term
The angular distance along the celestial equator from the observer's meridian to the hour circle of a given celestial body.
early-morning hournounCompound term
An hour early in the morning.
eleventh hournounCompound term
The latest possible moment.
flower-of-an-hournounCompound term
Annual weedy herb with ephemeral yellow purple-eyed flowers.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.