What the “o”?
It’s “o’clock,” and startled people are suddenly discovering the true meaning of a term they say almost every hour.
On Threads, a user going by the handle @jenny_nuel1 questioned her followers if they knew what the letter “o” truly stood for.
“What does the letter ‘O’ mean in o’clock?” The self-described fashion designer wrote this.
When people discover what the “o” in “o’clock” represents, they could be astonished.
Many people commented on her post, stating that it represented a number of concepts, including “Omega,” “oida” (Viennese for “old person”), “zero,” and more.
In different ways, a parade of naysayers asserted that it was a “contraction of the phrase ‘of the clock.'”
One Threads user clarified, “At the time of the clock’s invention, many people used the sundial, so to make the distinction, many people using the clock would state it’s ‘of the clock.'”
Fortunately, the solution they were searching for turned up quickly.
It is true that the “o” in “o’clock” stands for “of the.”
John Brown, who goes by @johnbrown2812 on Threads, stated, “The phrase ‘o’clock’ is a contraction of ‘of the clock,’ which was historically used to specify the time according to the clock.”
Saying “it’s 3 o’clock,” for instance, originally meant “it is 3 of the clock.” Over time, “of the” was reduced to just “O,” creating the expression we use today.
The Britannica Dictionary experts provided support for this interpretation, stating that “o’clock uses an apostrophe because the word is a contraction of the phrase ‘of the clock.'”
The origins of several expressions that are frequently used without knowing what the “o” stands for have been disclosed by Merriam-Webster, including “OK” and “okay.”
Throughout the 1820s and 1830s, humorists of the era frequently used “deliberate” and peculiar spellings of well-known phrases, “adopting now-cringey bumpkin personas with ignorance manifested in uneducated spellings.”
“‘All okay’ became an acronym for ‘oll wright,’ becoming O.W. And ‘all correct’ evolved into o.k., which is an acronym for ‘all correct,’ they clarified.
You’re in the kn-o-w now.