stupid o'clock
- noun
- Informal
:
hora intempestiva
- It is, instead, about the fact that when you get a new puppy, you get to wake up at stupid o'clock every morning to avoid spending the first 45 minutes of your day cleaning up a crate covered in poo.
Examples
-
Since my baby was born, I've been waking up at stupid o'clock every day, feeling tired and grumpy.
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I can't believe my alarm went off at stupid o'clock again; there's no reason to be up this early on a weekend.
-
The meeting was scheduled for stupid o'clock, which meant I had to leave the house before dawn.
How Early
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'an unreasonably early or inconvenient time' is directly inferable by combining 'stupid' (ridiculous/unreasonable) with 'o'clock' (a specific hour); the adjective simply evaluates the time as absurd. This is a regular adjective + time construction common across languages and uses normal compositional logic, so a B1 learner who knows both words can deduce the meaning.
Etymology
Stupid o'clock comes from a funny image: people put stupid before o'clock to show a time so early it feels silly, as if only someone silly would be awake then. That's why it means 'a very early or inconvenient time'.