Over the years, I have always wondered why people say 2 O'clock, 3 O'clock and 4 O'clock or what have you when asked what time it is. Today I found out what it meant.


The practice of saying “O’clock” is simply a remnant of simpler times when clocks weren’t very prevalent and people told time by a variety of means, depending on where they were and what references were available. Generally, of course, the Sun was used as a reference point, with solar time being slightly different than clock time.

Clocks divide the time evenly, whereas, by solar time, hour lengths vary somewhat based on a variety of factors, like what season it is. Thus, to distinguish the fact that one was referencing a clock’s time, rather than something like a sundial, as early as the fourteenth century one would say something like, “It is six of the clock,” which later got slurred down to “six o’clock” sometime around the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries.

In those centuries, it was also somewhat
common to just drop the “O” altogether and just say something like “six clock". Using the form of “o’clock” particularly increased in
popularity around the eighteenth century when it became common to do a similar slurring in the names of many things such as “Will-o’-the wisp” from “Will of the wisp” (stemming from a legend of an evil blacksmith named Will Smith, with “wisp” meaning “torch”) and “ Jack-o’-lantern ” from “Jack of the lantern” (which originally just
meant “man of the lantern” with “Jack,” at the time, being the generic “any man” name.

Later, either this or the Irish legend of “Stingy Jack” got this name transferred to
referring to carved pumpkins with lit candles inside).

While today with clocks being ubiquitous and few people, if anybody, telling direct time by the Sun, it isn’t necessary in most cases to specify we are referencing time from clocks, but the practice of saying “o’clock” has stuck
around anyway.

Now we all can see why we say O'clock when asked what time it is.

Cc: r231, freiburger.

Source:www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/03/say-oclock/

Learnt another thing today

Educative

Only in Africa!

Africa lost most of it's heritage in transit.

Our forefathers once used the sun, moon and shadows of objects to serve the same purpose in the past.

What happens to the Africans of now, did we stopped thinking?

abdulaz:
Africa lost most of it's heritage in transit.

Our forefathers once used the sun, moon and shadows of objects to serve the same purpose in the past.

What happens to the Africans of now, did we stopped thinking?

We replaced knowledge with religious fantasy, reasoning with faith, our brains with the bible/quran, self esteem with bleaching and reality with fantasies

hahn:


We replaced knowledge with religious fantasy, reasoning with faith, our brains with the bible/quran, self esteem with bleaching and reality with fantasies

You're so on point. We want to be told the truth even when we are seeing it right in front of us.

abdulaz:

You're so on point. We want to be told the truth even when we are seeing it right in front of us.

GBAM!