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hours

noun

Form of hour , plural of hour.

Simple meaning

An indefinite period of time.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

owerz

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈaʊɚz

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

  1. An indefinite period of time

  2. A period of time assigned for work

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A1 · Beginner
Frequency
Very Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

This meaning: An indefinite period of time

Used this way, hours 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 hours

  • “They work long hours.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

working hourshalf hourstwo hoursfour hoursthree hourseight hourssix hourslong hours

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • hournounBase word

    A period of time equal to 1/24th of a day.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • hourlyadverbDerived adverb

    Every hour.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • after hoursadverbCompound term

    Not during regular hours.

  • small hoursnounCompound term

    The hours just after midnight.

  • twenty-four hoursnounCompound term

    Time for Earth to make a complete rotation on its axis.

Related words

Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.

  • hour handnounRelated term

    The shorter hand of a clock that points to the hours.

Related Words

Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.

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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.