Word.ws English Dictionary

eleventh hour

eleventh hour noun: a point in time which is nearly too late; the last minute.

Noun

eleventh hour (countable and uncountable, plural eleventh hours)

  1. (idiomatic) A point in time which is nearly too late; the last minute.
    • If she repented, though at the eleventh hour, it was not too late.1857, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 85, in The Virginians
    • Highly providential was the appearance on the scene of Corny Kelleher when Stephen was blissfully unconscious but for that man in the gap turning up at the eleventh hour the finish might have been that he might have been a candidate for the accident ward […]1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 16]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC

eleventh hour meaning in Arabic

eleventh hour in Arabic

The last minute
آخر لحظة، اللحظة الأخيرة

Examples of eleventh hour in a sentence

  • I have extricated myself so far at many eleventh hours and perhaps there is some hope in this.1961, Philip Toynbee, Underdogs: Eighteen Victims of Society, page 56:
  • Egypt had managed to bring the two sides to the brink of a deal two weeks ago, before internal political dynamics prompted the Israelis to back out at the eleventh hour.2009 March 3, Tony Karon, “Why Money Alone Will Not Fix Gaza”, in TIME, archived from the original on 14 May 2009:
  • This explains why Yule kept the title secret until the eleventh hour, why some contemporary reviewers took exception to the title, and why Yule highlighted Burnell’s approval of the title.2014, James Lambert, “A Much Tortured Expression: A New Look At `Hobson-Jobson'”, in International Journal of Lexicography, volume 27...

Forms of eleventh hour

pluraleleventh hours
alternative formeleventh-hour
alternative form11th hour

Origin of eleventh hour

From a parable in the Bible of workmen hired at the eleventh hour (that is, late in the day), known as the Parable of the Workers of the Eleventh Hour or the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard: * King James Bible, Matthew 20:6 & 20:9: *: And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? … And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny.

Questions about eleventh hour

What does eleventh hour mean?
Eleventh hour means a point in time which is nearly too late; the last minute.
What is eleventh hour in Arabic?
Eleventh hour in Arabic is آخر لحظة، اللحظة الأخيرة. See Eleventh hour meaning in Arabic.
How do you use eleventh hour in a sentence?
I have extricated myself so far at many eleventh hours and perhaps there is some hope in this.
What part of speech is eleventh hour?
Eleventh hour is a noun.
What is the plural of eleventh hour?
The plural of eleventh hour is eleventh hours.

Words near eleventh hour in the dictionary

  1. eleventh cranial nerve
  2. eleventh grade
  3. eleventh grader
  4. eleventh graders
  5. eleventh grades
  6. eleventh hour
  7. eleventh hours
  8. Eleventh Month
  9. Eleventh Night
  10. eleventh-hour
  11. eleventhly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: eleventh hour (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-eleventh hour.ogg.

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