6 N‑PLURAL You can refer to the period of time during which something happens or operates each day as the hours during which it happens or operates. □ [+ of ] …the hours of darkness. □ Phone us on this number during office hours.
7 N‑PLURAL If you refer to the hours involved in a job, you are talking about how long you spend each week doing it and when you do it. □ I worked quite irregular hours.
8 → see eleventh hour , lunch hour , rush hour
9 PHRASE If you do something after hours , you do it outside normal business hours or the time when you are usually at work. □ …a local restaurant where steel workers unwind after hours.
10 → see also after-hours
11 PHRASE If you say that something happens at all hours of the day or night, you disapprove of it happening at the time that it does or as often as it does. [DISAPPROVAL ] □ She didn't want her fourteen-year-old daughter coming home at all hours of the morning.
12 PHRASE If something happens in the early hours or in the small hours , it happens in the early morning after midnight. □ Gibbs was arrested in the early hours of yesterday morning.
13 PHRASE If something happens on the hour , it happens every hour at, for example, nine o'clock, ten o'clock, and so on, and not at any number of minutes past an hour.
14 PHRASE Something that happens out of hours happens at a time that is not during the usual hours of business or work. [mainly BRIT ] □ Teachers refused to run out of hours sports matches because they weren't being paid.
hour|glass /aʊə r glɑːs/ (hourglasses ) also hour glass N‑COUNT An hourglass is a device that was used to measure the passing of an hour. It has two round glass sections linked by a narrow channel, and contains sand which takes an hour to flow from the top section into the lower one.
hour|ly /aʊə r li/
1 ADJ [ADJ n] An hourly event happens once every hour. □ He flipped on the radio to get the hourly news broadcast. ● ADV [ADV after v] Hourly is also an adverb. □ The hospital issued press releases hourly.
2 ADJ [ADJ n] Your hourly earnings are the money that you earn in one hour. □ They have little prospect of finding new jobs with the same hourly pay.
house ◆◆◆ (houses , housing , housed ) Pronounced /haʊ s/ for the noun and adjective, and /haʊ z/ for the verb. The form houses is pronounced /haʊ z I z/. 1 N‑COUNT A house is a building in which people live, usually the people belonging to one family. □ She has moved to a smaller house. □ …her parents' house in Warwickshire.
2 N‑SING You can refer to all the people who live together in a house as the house . □ If he set his alarm clock for midnight, it would wake the whole house.
3 N‑COUNT [n N ] House is used in the names of types of places where people go to eat and drink. □ …a steak house. □ …an old Salzburg coffee house.
4 N‑COUNT [n N ] House is used in the names of types of companies, especially ones which publish books, lend money, or design clothes. □ Many of the clothes come from the world's top fashion houses. □ Eventually she was fired from her job at a publishing house.
5 N‑COUNT [n N ] House is sometimes used in the names of office buildings and large private homes or expensive houses. [mainly BRIT ] □ I was to go to the very top floor of Bush House in Aldwych. □ …Harewood House near Leeds.
6 N‑COUNT You can refer to the two main bodies of Britain's parliament and the United States of America's legislature as the House or a House . □ Some members of the House and Senate worked all day yesterday.
7 N‑COUNT A house is a family which has been or will be important for many generations, especially the family of a king or queen. □ [+ of ] …the House of Windsor.
8 N‑COUNT The house is the part of a theatre, cinema, or other place of entertainment where the audience sits. You can also refer to the audience at a particular performance as the house . □ They played in front of a packed house.
9 ADJ [ADJ n] A restaurant's house wine is the cheapest wine it sells, which is not listed by name on the wine list. □ Tweed ordered a carafe of the house wine.
10 VERB To house someone means to provide a house or flat for them to live in. □ [V n] Part III of the Housing Act 1985 imposes duties on local authorities to house homeless people. □ [V n adv/prep] Regrettably we have to house families in these inadequate flats.
11 VERB [no cont] A building or container that houses something is the place where it is located or from where it operates. □ [V n] The château itself is open to the public and houses a museum of motorcycles and cars.
12 VERB [no cont] If you say that a building houses a number of people, you mean that is the place where they live or where they are staying. □ [V n] The building will house twelve boys and eight girls.
13 → see also boarding house , chapter house , clearing house , council house , doll's house , full house , open house , opera house , public house , Wendy house , White House
14 PHRASE If a person or their performance or speech brings the house down , the audience claps, laughs, or shouts loudly because the performance or speech is very impressive or amusing. [INFORMAL ] □ It's really an amazing dance. It just always brings the house down.
15 PHRASE If two people get on like a house on fire , they quickly become close friends, for example because they have many interests in common. [INFORMAL ]