Idiom
oh dark thirty
Meaning
Some unspecified hour in the early morning (implying an unpleasant time to be awake).
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“I have to wake up at oh dark thirty tomorrow.”
“The flight leaves at oh dark thirty, so we need to leave the house by four.”
“Soldiers grumbled about the drill scheduled for oh dark thirty, knowing sleep would be scarce and coffee would be weak.”
Examples
simple
“I have to wake up at oh dark thirty tomorrow.”
contextual
“The flight leaves at oh dark thirty, so we need to leave the house by four.”
complex
“Soldiers grumbled about the drill scheduled for oh dark thirty, knowing sleep would be scarce and coffee would be weak.”
Origin
From U.S. military terminology, in which hours before 10:00 am are prefixed with a zero, read as "oh", as in 0530, oh five-thirty, for 5:30 am.
Key words
Related idioms
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