Hourly
adjectiveHappening once every hour, or calculated by the hour.
How to spell hourly
6 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce hourly
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does hourly mean?
- adjectiveHappening once every hour, or calculated by the hour.
- adverbOnce every hour, or at frequent intervals.
Hourly in a sentence
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adjective
The station broadcasts an hourly news update.
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adverb
The nurse checked the patient's temperature hourly overnight.
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adjective
Contractors on the site earn an hourly wage rather than a salary.
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adverb
The parking meter charges drivers hourly until six in the evening.
Where does hourly come from?
Language of origin: Latin
The base word comes from the Latin hora, meaning 'a time' or 'a season', which itself was borrowed from the Greek hora, used for a period or fixed time of day. It travelled into English through Old French as 'ure' or 'houre' during the 1200s, gradually settling on the spelling 'hour' with a silent initial 'h' inherited from its French pronunciation. The suffix -ly is a native English (Germanic) ending that turns a noun into 'every' or 'in the manner of', so 'hourly' literally means 'happening every hour'. The silent 'h' and the 'our' cluster are the main spelling traps, both carried over directly from the French-influenced spelling of the root. The same hora root sits behind 'horoscope', which originally meant a reading of the hour of one's birth.
How the word is built
- hour (from Latin hora: a time, season)
- -ly (adjective/adverb suffix meaning 'every' or 'in the manner of')
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