hour [ME] Hours came into English from French, and go back to Greek hōra ‘season, hour’; *year is a distant relation. The Old English equivalent was *tide. The eleventh hour, meaning ‘the latest possible moment’, comes from the parable of the labourers in the Gospel of Matthew, in which someone pays people he hired at the beginning of the day the same daily rate as those he hired at the last or eleventh hour. As ‘eleventh tide’ it was in use in Old English. The phrase their finest hour was part of Winston Churchill’s speech in the House of Commons on 18 June 1940, before the Battle of Britain began: ‘Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour”.’