Do you know what the ‘o’ in ‘o’clock’ stands for? If not, the answer has been revealed

What the “o”?

Astonished people are finally learning the actual meaning of a phrase they say nearly every hour — and it’s “o’clock.”

A woman who goes by @jenny_nuel1 on Threads asked her followers if anyone knows what the “o” actually stands for.

“What’s the meaning of ‘O’ in o’clock???” wrote the self-described fashion designer.

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Several folks weighed in on her post, with various commenters offering that it stood for “zero,” “oida” (“old person” in Viennese), “Omega” and more.

A stream of know-it-alls claimed in various forms that it was a “contraction of the phrase ‘of the clock.'”

“At the invention of the clock, many people used the sundial, so to make the distinction, many people using the clock would state it’s ‘of the clock,'” explained one Threads user.

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Although provided with a plethora of answers, one onlooker wanted more.

“Now I want to know its origin,” the user confessed.

Luckily enough, the answer they were looking for was soon revealed.

The “o” in “o’clock” does indeed stand for “of the.”

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“The phrase ‘o’clock’ is a contraction of ‘of the clock,’ which was historically used to specify the time according to the clock,” wrote John Brown, who goes by @johnbrown2812 on Threads.

“For example, saying ‘it’s 3 o’clock’ originally meant ‘it is 3 of the clock.’ Over time, ‘of the’ was shortened to just ‘O,’ leading to the phrase we commonly use today.”

This explanation was backed up by the experts at the Britannica Dictionary , who taught that “an apostrophe is used in o’clock because the word is a contraction of the phrase ‘of the clock.'”

However, this isn’t the only phrase commonly used without understanding what the “o” stands for, such as “OK” or “okay,” the origins of which have been revealed by Merriam-Webster .

In the 1820s and 1830s, there were often “deliberate” and odd misspellings of popular phrases by humorists of the time who were “adopting now-cringey bumpkin personas with ignorance manifested in uneducated spellings.”

“‘All right’ became ‘O.W.,’ as an abbreviation for ‘oll wright.’ And ‘all correct’ became o.k. , as an abbreviation for ‘oll correct,'” they explained.

And now you’re in the kn- o -w.

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