Unveiling The Origins Of ‘O’clock’: What The ‘O’ Really Represents

Have you ever wondered what the letter “O” stands for in “o’clock”?  The question may appear easy to answer, but the origins of this term are a little more interesting. The word “o’clock,” to refer to time, as it is commonly used in informal speech, has its derivation from the early development of the English language.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, this is actually a contraction of the expression “of the clock,” which can be seen for the first time in print in the early 14th century.

During the medieval times, clock towers and church bells dominated the more mundane forms of timekeeping. The people started calling time on a time “of the clock” in order to make it distinct from other ways of keeping time. One good example is saying “three of the clock” instead of just “three hours.”

The abbreviation “o’clock” was born as a convenient shorthand. By the 16th century, the phrase had become common in spoken English, but the full form, “of the clock,” was gradually dropped, leaving just the “o'” to signify this reference. This linguistic development parallels the more general trend of shortening cumbersome phrases to promote ease of utterance.

According to the historians and linguists, it participated in the more general pattern in English, where the phrases shortened continuously in time. The process of abbreviation is a natural linguistic development, aimed at making speech more fluid and efficient.

Nowadays, the word “o’clock” is self-explanatory in meaning hours of the day and, thus, needs no explanation. The etymology of this term is very interesting and it demonstrates how language develops and changes within centuries.