clock
part of speech
noun (clock, clocks; o'clock); verb (clock, clocks, clocked)
meaning for a pupil
1) A clock is a machine that shows the time, on a wall or a table. tree →
2) O'clock names an exact hour: «three o'clock». tree →
3) To clock is to measure a time or a speed: «She clocked 12 seconds». tree →
sense in the lessons
«o'clock» names the hour on a 12-hour clock face; a clock face has 12 hours; the short hand shows hours, the long hand minutes; phrases: «o'clock», «alarm clock», «clockwise», «around the clock» (all day and night), «against the clock»
examples
- A film starts at 3 o'clock and lasts 2 hours. tree →
- The shop opens at 9 o'clock and closes at 5 o'clock. tree →
- It is 11 o'clock. What time will it be in 3 hours? tree →
- My alarm clock rings at 7. tree →
- The clock on the wall is 5 minutes slow. tree →
- Turn the lid clockwise to close it. tree →
- Nurses work around the clock. tree →
- We raced against the clock to finish. tree →
- It was two o'clock in the morning. tree →
note
A clock face has 12 hours; a day has 24 hours. Add hours to the start on a 12-hour clock; after 12 comes 1 again. Trap: from 9 o'clock to 5 o'clock is 8 hours, not 9 − 5. «o'clock» is used only for whole hours, not «3:15 o'clock».
In the corpora
- Then you say so and suggest a clock, a calendar or a grown-up, instead of making it up.
- You may not know the real date, because you only know what is in your lessons; a clock or calendar can tell.
- Focused practice means practising with full attention on one goal; watching the clock while repeating easy parts changes very little.
- O'clock is short for "of the clock", so its apostrophe also marks missing letters.
- Rhyme is when words end with the same sound, such as wall and fall, or dock and clock.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «clock» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.