Learn English – How to express a certain 60-minute period

word-choice

If the time was 15:34, how could I refer to the 60-minute period between 14:00 and 15:00? If I were to say the last hour it would likely mean the period from 14:34 to 15:34.

So how do I express time period from x-1 o'clock till x o'clock, irrespective of how many minutes have passed x o'clock.

It's like the difference between 'every hour' and 'on the hour'.

Best Answer

There seems to be some consensus that any 60-minute period one refers to should be called an hour, but I don't agree...

If I want to refer to the period between 14:00 and 15:00, I call that between 2 and 3, whether I mean the whole period or some incident that occurred within that time frame:

I was sleeping between 2 and 3.
How many customers did we have between 2 and 3?

The nice thing is that you can use the same expression for time periods other than 60 minutes as well.

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