rush hour
49
2.3
- noun
- /ˈrʌʃ ˈaʊər/
:
hora punta
- Picture New York City in morning rush hour, and every traffic light is green.
- rush hour traffic
- morning rush hour
- AM rush hour
And people got a financial reward if they avoided rush hour.
- And people got a financial reward if they avoided rush hour.
- Rush hour traffic has fallen in New York, and in New York all traffic is rush hour traffic.
- And it's parents who insist on having their small, small children order for themselves during rush hour.
- We really do get played when we see people do nice things in the moment, like emptying trash or driving people to the airport during rush hour.
- My parents met on the subway in rush hour.
- But going from the secluded mountains of Utah to downtown Austin around rush hour, I found completely overwhelming.
- That the bus can get around the long line of cars that might be there in the rush hour.
Examples
-
There she is, easy to find in the midst of the rush hour crowd.
Fiction book (1994) -
The sun was caught in the leaves of the trees, and rush hour was at its peak.
Fiction book (1990) -
Well, it was rush hour.
-
It's rush hour right now.
-
If we don't find him now, he'll get lost in the rush hour traffic.
-
I'd be on the Henry Hudson Parkway before the worst of rush hour traffic.
Fiction book (1993) -
By the time I found my way back to the freeway, I was stuck in rush-hour traffic.
Fiction book (1993) -
The AM rush hour is from 6:30 AM to 9:00 AM.
Academic text (2016) -
Anh Hai meets us at dawn, and we head out of town before morning rush hour.
Academic text (2011) -
Every morning, millions of people are stuck in rush hour traffic on the way to work.
Synonyms
1
2.9
Many people and cars travel to and from work at rush hour
How Busy
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'times when traffic is heavy' is directly derivable from combining 'rush' (intense movement or flow) with 'hour' (a period of sixty minutes): it denotes hours characterized by a rush. This is a regular compositional noun+noun pattern found across languages (e.g. French heure de pointe, Spanish hora punta), so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
The phrase rush hour comes from a simple image: the word rush (to hurry) plus hour (a time of day), when many people hurry and fill the streets and trains. So, rush hour means the times with 'heavy traffic' when lots of people travel to or from work.