Word.ws English Dictionary

give the time of day

give the time of day verb: to acknowledge someone; to give someone respect or attention; to tip one's hat.

Verb

give the time of day (third-person singular simple present gives the time of day, present participle giving the time of day, simple past gave the time of day, past participle given the time of day)

  1. (idiomatic) To acknowledge someone; to give someone respect or attention; to tip one's hat.
    • If you're lucky, she might give you the time of day.
    • But meet him now, and be it in the Morne, / When euery one will giue the time of day, / He knits his Brow and ſhewes an angry Eye, / And paſſeth by with ſtiffe vnbowed Knee, / Diſdaining dutie that to vs belongs.1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
  2. (idiomatic) To not acknowledge someone; to snub someone; to disrespect someone; to ignore someone.
    • He won't give the time of day to someone like you or me.
    • I tried to say "hi", but she wouldn't give me the time of day.
  3. (dated, literally) To tell someone the time of day by looking at one's wristwatch, etc.

Forms of give the time of day

third-person singular presentgives the time of day
present participlegiving the time of day
pastgave the time of day
past participlegiven the time of day

Origin of give the time of day

According to some, the expression originally literally referred to greeting someone with the obsolete greeting "good time of day", or other greeting appropriate to the time of day (e.g., good morning, good afternoon, good evening), and only later acquired an association with telling someone the time, along with its idiomatic sense.

Questions about give the time of day

What does give the time of day mean?
Give the time of day means to acknowledge someone; to give someone respect or attention; to tip one's hat.
What part of speech is give the time of day?
Give the time of day is a verb.
What is the past tense of give the time of day?
The past tense of give the time of day is gave the time of day.

Words near give the time of day in the dictionary

  1. give the mitten to
  2. give the royal treatment
  3. give the sack
  4. give the stem
  5. give the store away
  6. give the time of day
  7. give the word
  8. give them an inch and they'll take a mile
  9. give them an inch and they'll take an ell
  10. give thought
  11. give toco

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: give the time of day (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-give the time of day.ogg.

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