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- The modern-day system of using a 60-minute, 60-second clock dates back to 2000 BC.
- However, it continued to evolve, and the first recorded clock was built around the year 996.
- It took another 300+ years for the timepieces to become mainstream.
- So, for a long time, the clocks co-existed with various other time measuring means such as sundials, water clocks, candle clocks, and hourglasses.
- Around the 14th century, to distinguish that one was referring to a clock’s time (and not sundial or water clock, etc.), one would say, “It is four of the clock.”
- Of the clock later got slurred down to o’clock.
- In written English, it was common to contract the words and replace the missing words/letters with an apostrophe.
- E.g., Don’t is a contraction for Do not; You’ll is a contraction for You will.
- So, by the 16th or 17th century, ‘of the clock’ contracted and ‘four of the clock’ became ‘four o’clock’.
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Image courtesy of Stas Knop through Pexels
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