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View synonyms for eleventh hour

eleventh hour

noun

  1. the last possible moment for doing something:

    to change plans at the eleventh hour.



eleventh hour

noun

    1. the latest possible time; last minute
    2. ( as modifier )

      an eleventh-hour decision



eleventh hour

  1. The last minute: “The water bombers arrived at the eleventh hour — just in time to prevent the forest fire from engulfing the town.”


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Word History and Origins

Origin of eleventh hour1

First recorded in 1820–30

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Idioms and Phrases

The latest possible time, as in We turned in our report at the eleventh hour . This term is thought to allude to the parable of the laborers (Matthew 20:1–16), in which those workers hired at the eleventh hour of a twelve-hour working day were paid the same amount as those who began in the first hour. [Early 1800s]

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Example Sentences

All this has created an outpouring of national sentiment and a predictable flurry of eleventh-hour government initiatives.

She won an Emmy in 1963 for an episode of The Eleventh Hour.

No more eleventh-hour miracles—the inevitable finally has to happen.

In fact Kennedy and Khrushchev did bend the bars just enough to reach out to each other at the eleventh hour.

A lot of what is going on is “political grandstanding,” Obama said, and generally the crisis is averted at the eleventh hour.

To go back on it, and at the eleventh hour, would proclaim him weak and vacillating, and the effect might be as Strachan said.

The whole being recoiled now, at the eleventh hour, as a fierce wild creature that one tries to bury alive.

And this eleventh-hour reminder gave him the excuse which later, in his superconscientiousness, he deemed a necessity.

Thou shalt not at the eleventh hour begin to hunt material for thy paper.

It came now, kindly, friendly and even affectionate, at the very eleventh hour.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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